Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The Asset Recycling Fund Bill 2014 and related bill are very bad bills. Once again they are a great example of 'Howardian' language. This is the language of the Howard government, which used to give titles to bills which meant the complete opposite. I am reminded of the More Jobs, Better Pay Bill, which was, of course, a title given to a bill that actually cut unemployment benefits. I am also reminded of Work Choices. Wasn't that a wonderful use of Howardian language for the naming of a bill—Work Choices, whereby the most vulnerable in our society were given no choice? They were forced into taking contracts and conditions that cut their award wage.

Here we have it again in the Asset Recycling Fund Bill 2014. When I saw this title, I thought: 'Gee, that's an interesting title for a bill. I wonder what this bill is about.' I read the explanatory memorandum and then I saw it—privatisation

This is exactly what this bill is about: privatisation. I thought to myself, 'why can't they just say that this bill is about selling government assets—selling assets owned by the people of Australia?' But no—because this government are all about deceit. They are first-class—tick—when it comes to deceit of the Australian people. It was Tony Abbott, now Prime Minister, who said before the election, 'no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no changes to pensions and no cuts to the ABC and SBS'—yet that is exactly what has been done in the current budget. What is worse is that the Prime Minister says that these are not broken election commitments, and that there is no deceit at all of the Australian people. Well, the Australian people would be horrified to know that the Commonwealth is encouraging the states to sell assets that are owned by the taxpayers of Australia, and offering a financial incentive for them to do so—a 15 per cent payment on the sale value, which has been described by Chris Aulich, a professor of public administration, as a 'bribe'. There is an expert in public administration and in the sale of public assets describing what this government is doing as a bribe—and that says it all, about this government's approach to infrastructure development in Australia.

These assets—electricity, gas, water, transport, health, and education assets—are not owned by the Abbott government; they are owned by the people of Australia. They are government assets that deliver government services. They return dividends to the Australian public, which allow them to invest in schools, in roads, and in education. In my state of New South Wales over the last couple of years, the energy assets have been returning $1 billion in revenues to the people of New South Wales—and that money has been used to upgrade hospitals, to build new schools and to upgrade schools. To think that these assets that are owned by the Australian people are going to be sold—importantly, without any due diligence and without consideration of what is in the national interest; just so that a government can secure a 15 per cent payment, or a bribe, as described by Chris Aulich, on the asset—is somewhat horrific. It is akin to someone selling the family home to get a 15 per cent windfall, and then renting for the rest of their life and, over time, paying more for an asset that they once owned. It does not make any sense. Governments should not be paying other governments to sell assets that are owned by the Australian public.

These two bills, the Asset Recycling Fund Bill 2014 and the Asset Recycling Fund (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2014 represent the complete failure of this government to develop any plan to invest in infrastructure for the nation's future. Labor believes that the federal government should take a leading role in working with states and territories to fund nation-building infrastructure projects, including setting government standards to allow decisions to be made in the national interest, not according to a political cycle. Labor will be moving amendments in the House which would ensure that the Building Australia Fund requires that the minister may not recommend a proposal for Commonwealth funding unless the minister has considered advice from Infrastructure Australia as to the merit of the project and, particularly, as to its contribution to enhancing our nation's productivity. That is the basis on which Australia should be making investments in assets on the back of the sale of other assets.

Further, we will move an amendment requiring the finance minister to table a disallowable instrument, for each privatisation or re-investment transaction that the government deems eligible for the incentive payment, as a precondition to the payment of Commonwealth funds. This is to ensure that there is some due diligence to this process. We cannot allow a blank cheque for this government to do deals with states, and to allow those states to completely sell off assets without any sort of due diligence being done—with the carrot being provided of a 15 per cent windfall on the asset sale price. It is almost immoral—to think that a government would make such an encouragement, in a piece of legislation such as this, to sell off assets that have been owned by the Australian people for centuries and have returned dividends that fund additional government services.

Given that the federal government often provides at least half of the funds for many projects, the replacement of direct support of that nature with a 15-per-cent incentive that allows the federal government to withdraw from the historically large commitments that were made by Labor is a backward step. It is a sneaky and underhanded withdrawal from proper scrutiny of investment and planning for infrastructure in this country. This is an initiative that should sit on top of—it must sit in addition to—the high level of federal commitment under Labor to funding nation-building projects in road, rail and other nationally significant infrastructure. The federal government's refusal to fund nation-building urban passenger rail projects remains a major failure. These should be funded even-handedly, following independent advice from a transparent decision-making body. Failure to do so distorts state decision-making and leads to sub-optimal productivity outcomes. The Abbott government is on very shaky ground when it comes to investment in infrastructure. An article in The Sydney Morning Herald on 12 June reports that:

The Abbott government has been accused of pork-barrelling after analysis of the budget's infrastructure spending revealed Coalition electorates are favoured for new money by a ratio of three to one.

A Fairfax Media analysis of the Abbott government's 2014 budget has calculated that, of the new projects announced and funded, just under three-quarters were in Coalition electorates.

But it does not end there. The Herald goes on to report that, in comparison, the majority of projects which lost federal funding in the 2013 election—because of course we know the government reduced the amount of expenditure on infrastructure—were in non-Liberal electorates, such as the Metro Melbourne Rail Link in Victoria.

This politicisation of infrastructure is sad and petty. It is also harmful to our nation's development and, importantly, it is harmful to productivity-building infrastructure in this country. Labor is happy to stand on its record with respect to investment in infrastructure; in fact, we are quite proud of what we achieved as a government in the six years that we were investing in infrastructure. Our record, and the facts, speak for themselves. When Labor came to government, Australia as a nation was 20th in the world—20th in the OECD in terms of spending on infrastructure as a proportion of GDP. By the time we left government, Australia was No. 1 in terms of the amount of money spent on infrastructure as a proportion of GDP—a great indication of Labor's investment in infrastructure. We lifted the funding from $132 per Australian to $225 per Australian. We created Infrastructure Australia to research and to rank proposed infrastructure projects based on their potential to add to economic productivity; and we delivered a national port strategy and a national freight strategy.

Let us have a look at what the coalition has done since they have come to government. Almost all of its package is re-announcements of Labor-funded projects. I had to laugh in question time yesterday when the Minister for Infrastructure and Deputy Prime Minister was up here talking about so-called new projects that had been invested in by this government. Of course, he cited the Port Botany rail freight project, which happens to be in my electorate, and which I happen to know is almost completed. It is almost finished—it is being built as we speak, but the Deputy Prime Minister claims this as a new infrastructure project being invested in by this government. That is a great symbol of the approach of this government when it comes to infrastructure and the claims they are making, and of the deceit they are perpetrating on the Australian people.

This government also refuses to invest money in public transport, dumping Brisbane's Cross River Rail project, the Perth public transport package and the Melbourne Metro, and is in the process of gutting Infrastructure Australia by giving the minister the power to exclude classes of infrastructure from its consideration and to prohibit the publication of research. This point was confirmed by Infrastructure Australia representatives just two weeks ago in a Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications hearing into public infrastructure in Australia. In that hearing they confirmed that the minister is now able to direct Infrastructure Australia not to look at a particular proposal—which may be in the nation's best interests, which may improve productivity and which may be a passenger rail program—just because the minister feels that way. That is not the way to develop infrastructure and to develop the productivity of our economy.

Labor doubled the roads budget to $46.5 billion, and upgraded 7,500 kilometres worth of roads. We lifted local government roads grants by 20 per cent. The coalition has committed to Melbourne's east-west rail link and Sydney's WestConnex project without a cost-benefit analysis. Here they are saying 'Infrastructure Australia plays a valuable role, it should be involved in assessing the value of infrastructure projects; it should apply cost-benefit analysis principles'. Certainly when I was a member of the Senate the finance minister used to make quite a deal of the importance of a cost-benefit analysis before any government project is undertaken—and here they are in defiance of their own election promises and in defiance of their own rhetoric when it comes to assessing infrastructure.

They have shamelessly re-announced Labor projects such as the Gateway North in Brisbane and the Bruce and Pacific highway upgrades. If you drive up the Pacific Highway these days, you will find the Bulahdelah bypass has just been completed. You will go through the Kempsey bypass, you will see the Ballina bypass which has just been completed, and you will see the Woolgoolga bypass being constructed. These are all projects that Labor funded and put in place, and that Labor is building. I used to laugh, because I used to be the duty senator for that particular area, and I would go up there to open various stages of the Kempsey bypass, and Andrew Stoner, the deputy leader of the government in New South Wales, was always there claiming that this was a New South Wales government-invested project and trying to steal the media associated with the project. That must be something that runs in conservatives' blood in this country, because that is exactly what has occurred again. The disease has spread to Canberra, because that is exactly what is occurring with infrastructure and this government—they are stealing the credit for projects that were put in place and that were built by Labor governments and trying to claim them as their own.

In rail, Labor committed to more investment in urban rail infrastructure than all of its predecessor governments combined since Federation—$13.6 billion invested in rail projects by the Labor government, which says it all about our commitment, particularly to passenger rail projects; and $3.4 billion in the rail freight network over six years. We also rebuilt more than one-third of the network—4,000 kilometres of track. So these are bad bills. They are dressed up as asset recycling bills when in fact they are justifying privatisation of assets that are owned by the Australian people. It is a deceit perpetrated on the Australian people in the name of privatisation.

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