Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

Labor supports the amendments that were put forward to the original flawed Infrastructure Australia Amendment Bill. We would have had an opportunity to move those amendments back in December 2010 when the House of Representatives considered the legislation. At that time—and I do not blame the minister for this—the government thought it was intelligent for some reason to come into this chamber and gag the debate on the Infrastructure Australia Amendment Bill. Members might recall that, because I think it was after something in the order of 19 divisions later in the evening and after 11 o'clock that the legislation was carried. I note that none of the bills that I am responsible for have been gagged since, and I expect that that will be the case in the future, given that experience.

Had we been able to move amendments then, we would have moved the substantial amendments that are now being supported by the entire parliament. We would have done so with the support of the submissions that were made by the Business Council of Australia, by the Urban Development Institute of Australia, by Infrastructure Partnerships Australia and by anyone else who considered the implications of the original bill. The original bill that was brought before this parliament and gagged through this chamber would have taken away the independence of Infrastructure Australia. It provided for the minister to be able to exclude categories of infrastructure, and we on this side of the chamber had our fears about that realised when we looked at the May budget where funding for every single public transport project that was not under construction was removed from the federal budget. That included projects such as the Cross River Rail project and the Melbourne Metro project that were high on Infrastructure Australia's priority list. Infrastructure Australia has already been conducting rolling audits, with a list published at least annually, which has a pipeline of projects from projects that are ready to proceed right through to projects that show some promise but need more work to be done. Cross River Rail was at the very top of the June 2012 Infrastructure Australia priority list.

What the original legislation would have allowed a minister to do is say: do not look at public transport. What we say is that if Infrastructure Australia is to be able to do its job it must be independent of the minister and the government. It must be able to look at infrastructure plans for how you deal with urban congestion in cities, for example. That is one of the big challenges. You cannot look at it unless you look at the way that a city functions: how it is planned, what the road network is, what the rail network is, what the connection is between moving passengers and people and moving freight. It is all interconnected. That is why we were very concerned, and the business community shared those concerns. I am pleased that the government has agreed to our position on that.

There is a second major area of amendments that are being considered here and which we support. We were very concerned that the legislation gave the minister power to direct Infrastructure Australia in a range of ways, including what could be published. It is an attempt to take away the transparency of Infrastructure Australia. When I was the minister there was a range of things that Infrastructure Australia had to say, including measures such as tolling the Pacific Highway. I did not agree with that. I would never agree with that, and I think the current minister would have the same view. But it is important that Infrastructure Australia is able to consider issues such as pricing and the way that the road network functions in a way that is independent. That is part of its role.

The other role that Infrastructure Australia plays—and why it is important for the linkages to go between the Commonwealth and the state—is to work in a dynamic way so that they improve the way that the states deliver infrastructure projects. There is much work to be done in terms of states doing the preparatory work for which they are responsible.

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