Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

May I thank all members who have contributed to the debate. There is a universal agreement on both sides of the parliament that infrastructure and building better infrastructure are important national priorities and that we as a parliament need to do what we can to provide adequate infrastructure to service the needs of our country and our growing economy in the years ahead. This bill will not only help put in place the arrangements for funding for major infrastructure projects, particularly over the next five years, but also it will set in place a legislative framework which will endure and support future governments' initiatives in land transport. The government is committed to building the infrastructure of the 21st century, as the previous speaker, Ms Marino, said and the changes in the bill will help us achieve this goal. The amendments to the Nation Building Program (National Land Transport) Act 2009 are necessary to facilitate the government's ambitious land transparent infrastructure agenda.

The bill continues the vitally important Roads to Recovery program beyond 30 June 2014. Amendments to the act are necessary as it currently specifies the Roads to Recovery funding period as ending on 30 June 2014. The bill removes this specification from the act and places it in Roads to Recovery list, which allows the program to continue and removes the need to amend the act every time the funding period changes.

The bill renames the Nation Building Program (National Land Transport) Act 2009 to the National Land Transport Act 2014, removing the link between the name of the act and the name of the land transport infrastructure funding program. This means that the act will not need to be amended if the name of the land transport infrastructure funding program changes. It is the most sensible name for the act and keeps it above politics. The bill also streamlines and enhances the operation of the act to benefit the states and territories and the Commonwealth.

The bill is consistent with the government's deregulation agenda, repealing three spent land transport infrastructure acts. There are no regulatory or financial impacts on business and on the amendments to the Nation Building Program (National Land Transport) Act 2009 or the repeal of the spent legislation.

I do not propose to respond specifically to all of the comments made by members in their contributions, but I do acknowledge their general support for infrastructure investment and for ensuring that we have an adequate program to meet our nation's needs. Some members spoke in support of existing projects, which are in the program, and many others raised, on behalf of their electorates, other major road projects—all of them, no doubt, worthy. They would like to see these projects included in the land transport program in the years ahead. I hope we can continue to build on the foundations of the past and to expand the quality of our road and rail network right across the nation. This legislation will certainly contribute to that.

There is often debate between both sides of politics as to who has done the most in relation to road funding and road construction and I suspect that that will always be a part of the political debate. The member for Grayndler likes to speak with some degree of pride about what was achieved in his term in government. I would just remind him that the Howard government spent more on infrastructure than the previous ALP government and the next coalition government is going to spend more on infrastructure than the last Labor government. The Howard government was the first to establish a national transport land plan and I think both sides of politics, while we may have different priorities, have sought to work on stronger infrastructure for our nation. I hope that that can be continued in future.

The government has identified a long list of projects that will be our priorities over the next five years. I think all of those projects will make a real difference. I am sure that in addition—unless this government serves for many decades, which we naturally hope to do—there will be projects that will cross governments. I suspect that the list of projects, in many instances, will be fairly similar. On Friday, I had the privilege of opening the Hunter Expressway, for which the money was first provided in 1997 and its actual construction crossed three federal governments. That is not uncommon in these very large infrastructure projects. In reality we need to work constructively as a parliament to put together the kinds of infrastructure projects that will make a real difference in the future.

The program we have announced and we are determined to deliver includes quite a number of new projects. They will be of particular significance in the cities and in regional Australia. Beyond that we have fully committed and budgeted for the projects that the previous government had planned to fund with the proceeds of the mining tax, which commitments it was never going to be capable of meeting. This demonstrates why this government is committed to building and delivering the infrastructure of the 21st century and beyond.

I commend the bill to the House.

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