Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise with great pride to speak about the Asset Recycling Fund Bill and the Asset Recycling Fund Consequential Amendments Bill. We went to the election in 2013, and 7 September saw us elected as the government for Australia. We took four main promises to that election. No. 1 was to axe the carbon tax. That should be the easiest thing in the world to do, because we had bipartisan support—Kevin Rudd lined it up and shot it dead. It was gone. He had laid it down and put it to death. That would be the easy part. So we came in here and we passed the bill. Funnily enough, we asked the member for Hughes, who was in the last parliament, if he was ever under any misconceptions about our position on the carbon tax—we had always said it was going to go. But Labor, of course, had a few views on that sort of thing. When we came in here, Labor said they were going to terminate the carbon tax. But when the Minister for the Environment, Greg Hunt, stood up and presented the repeal bill, Labor voted against it—and they are still voting against it. So, whilst it has been passed in here, it is sitting over in the other place. But I will give that one a tick.

Our second big one was to stop the boats. It has been six months without a boat. With a little bit of steel in the spine of the minister involved, he stood up and meant what he said. He went to the party room and he sold us on what we were supposed to do—and we have stopped the boats. We are actually shutting down detention centres in this country at the moment, so we can give that one a big tick.

The third one was to build the roads of the 21st century, and that one is on its way. I do not think there is anything surer than Warren Truss with the bit between his teeth. Jamie Briggs, the Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, has been all over the country telling us what we are going to do, how we are going to do it and the amount of money we will be spending. I was on the record in 2010 admitting and conceding that Labor spent more on infrastructure, including roads, than the Howard government did. I was on the record saying that. We will spend more than the Labor government did, just as the Howard government spent more than the Hawke-Keating government. The Hawke-Keating government spent more than the Fraser government. The Fraser government did not spend more than the Whitlam government, though—no-one spent more than the Whitlam government!

The fourth promise was to fix the budget. That is on its way. That is what the budget is all about. Our first budget is responsible. Everyone's shoulder is to the wheel. We have a national narrative for where we as a country want to go. We want to go back to the days when we lived within our means. I have always said that no business returns to profit by shutting its doors. Similarly, no federal government budget returns to surplus by shutting down the economy. It is a delicate balancing act that we have to have.

There was still a real growth in spending in this budget of 2.7 per cent. Those opposite will stick to their mantra of spending growth in real terms needing to be two per cent. They had to cut another 0.7 per cent further just to get to where they wanted to be. They said for the last six years that spending would be cut to two per cent growth in real terms. They never actually achieved it. Of course, they also said that they would bring the budget to surplus a number of times. I am an auctioneer and I can count pretty high and pretty fast but—by jingo!—there is a bit of work to be done to try to keep up with the number of times they did that.

How do we keep the economy moving? How do we keep the economy going? How do we make sure that we do not stall the economy? An example is in Townsville, where we have state support for the ring road. The coalition government have brought forward the second part of that project. We want it done in one fell swoop because the local contractors want to make sure that the work is being done. That sort of tenacity and forward-looking and forward-thinking management by your minister and assistant minister on infrastructure spending is something that should be held in high regard. Instead, it is met with derision from the other side.

The Queensland government faces probably the biggest task in this country after nearly 20 years of Labor rule. It has a massive debt and deficit issue, far greater in real terms than the Australian government. If you talk to Queensland Treasurer Tim Nicholls, he understands the challenge. The capacity of state governments over generations to earn and increase their own income has been wound back. Tim Nicholls, the state Treasurer, will tell you straight away that he does not like stamp duty and payroll tax but, if you take those away, he will not collect any money to bring into the state coffers. It must be very tempting for state governments, though, because they are faced with debt and deficit problems, to sell assets and simply retire debt. That would be a very tempting thing to do—to simply retire debt and try to get rid of the Labor memory as quickly as possible. This is what these bills address. It is about the benefit. It is about having an asset and what comes of that asset. Yes, we should be retiring debt. But, no, we do not want to stall the economy. There should be a pay-off and there should be benefit for it.

When Treasurer Joe Hockey was in Townsville he was asked what he needed to see. He was asked what, if he were to be the nation's Treasurer, he wanted to see. He said, 'I want to see cranes in the sky. I want to see dozers pushing dirt. I want to see work being done, because we have to build stuff. We have to make sure that we are being productive and producing infrastructure.' It is not just infrastructure. Anyone can build school halls. It needs to be infrastructure that provides greater access for trade and commerce. That is what we need. That is where we want to be focused.

When Andrew Robb was in Townsville he said not only do we have to be spending more money on infrastructure but we have to think about how we fund it. Every country in the world has an infrastructure deficit. So we have to try to figure out how best to address it. There is no way in the world that a government can just come straight out and spend the money. Maybe those opposite could! But no government with any sort of responsibility could just come out and spend the money to get our infrastructure up to date. So how do we maximise the best terms? How do we do the most we can for our dollar? It is by engaging in the private sector and engaging foreign capital. That is how we have to do it. The Asset Recycling Fund Bill is part of our response to that. These are the positive measures that we as a country and government will take to make it more alluring and profitable for state governments of the day who hold these assets to reinvest in their states and in their local communities.

There are some technical aspects of this bill I would like to walk through. The Asset Recycling Initiative taps into private sector investor interest in established brownfield assets—those are established assets, such as ports or electricity companies, with proven earnings—in order to fund new infrastructure projects. You will find that companies such as superannuation firms do not want to invest in greenfield sites because they would be risking the superannuation of our workers forever. Where something has a genuine business case, that is what superannuation firms will invest in. They will not invest in greenfield sites.

The Australian government is establishing the Asset Recycling Fund as a dedicated investment vehicle for providing financial assistance and incentives to states and territories to create new infrastructure that boosts economic growth. We are boosting economic growth in Queensland. In Townsville, say, if the state government was to sell the Townsville port and part of that money went into investing in new infrastructure, that could lead to new commerce, which would lead to more people moving to Townsville, leading to people buying cars and building and buying houses, and there would be stamp duty and registration—the money churn that goes through the community.

The Asset Recycling Fund will be established from 1 July this year. This will allow funding to flow to infrastructure priorities and promote productivity and generate economic growth. The infrastructure growth package will build Australia's infrastructure for the 21st century. In the budget the Abbott government delivered a record $50 billion for infrastructure investment commencing with an initial $5.7 billion and the government is committed to adding to the fund over time.

If you speak to the trade minister when he travels overseas, he says that he hosts roundtables and at those roundtables they have serious investors and all sorts of infrastructure discussions. What they want to know is whether Australia will change the rules. We had lots of investment here in the mining boom and then suddenly we brought in the mining super profits tax which turned into the mining rent tax—it's the vessel with the pestle, not the chalice from the palace! It was just a bit of a hodgepodge of bills and that sort of thing which led capital investment to flee overseas. Andrew Robb, the Minister for Trade, has been told that if we are serious we will provide the ground rules and those are the rules under which we want to invest. What he is trying to say to those people overseas is that we are serious. The Prime Minister, the foreign minister, the defence minister and the trade minister were all overseas last week with key clients, key countries around our region and around the world, and they were saying that we are open for business. We are speaking with a coherent message.

The Asset Recycling Fund will support the Asset Recycling Initiative which will provide incentives for states and territories to sell existing assets and invest in new infrastructure that supports a more productive economy. That is the key here. This sends the message that Australia is open for business all the way through. This historic agreement with the states has the potential to raise close to $40 billion of new infrastructure funding around the country. That is what we have to be doing here.

The fund's purpose will be to have an explicit purpose consistent with government's investment in productivity enhancing infrastructure, so it will not just be about building marine parks or shutting down fishing industries or anything like that. You will not be able to use it for that. The establishment of the investment fund will allow capital amounts to be invested by the Future Fund Board of Guardians to earn interest that will also be available to fund investment in infrastructure. This funding comes from uncommitted money in the Building Australia and Education Investment Fund—$2.4 billion from the Building Australia Fund and $3.5 billion from the Education Investment Fund. The Asset Recycling Fund also allows for the new fund to be credited with proceeds from the sale of Medibank Private and with the proceeds of any further privatisation initiatives.

The key here is to look at who is looking after us. We have a bit of a history when it comes to putting money away. We have got the Future Fund which was looked after by Peter Costello at the time. He put the money there to start off with. That has gone pretty well with money in the bank to make sure that public servants have their superannuation paid for and guaranteed, and that is a pretty serious investment.

Payments to states and territories will be made through the COAG Reform Fund. Once again, there are lots of checks and balances all the way through there. The project funding for the Asset Recycling Fund to cover payments to states and territories through COAG Reform Fund will require the approval of the finance minister following recommendations made by the Treasurer or the Minister for Infrastructure. So the Asset Recycling Fund will have Future Fund Board of Guardians. The Treasurer and the infrastructure minister will have the responsibility for ensuring that funds that pass through the COAG Reform Fund special account and the infrastructure portfolio special account are expended in a manner consistent with the purposes of the fund as set out in the legislation.

We have a track record when it comes to these things. In places like Townsville we need infrastructure spending. We need to make sure that it is funded. We need to be able to fund it as well as we possibly can and get as big a bang for our buck as we possibly can. When it comes to Townsville, we are delivering on infrastructure at our university. We are delivering $42 million for the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine. We have got the ring road going through—another $160 million—and there is the investment brought forward of $120 million for the Joint Logistics Hub at Townsville under construction as we speak. There is the Vantassel Street bypass. It was approved in 2010. It was supposed to start but we had a flood in 2011 so the federal government pulled funding for flood relief in Townsville and put it into flood relief in Brisbane. That is what Labor's infrastructure minister did. That is what Labor's infrastructure minister thought of North Queensland when it came to infrastructure there.

All in all I am very happy with what is happening here. I think that we have to be smart with what we are doing and I think that with the leadership we have shown here and the management that we will put in place, this is a great move for Australia. I thank the House.

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