Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to rise to speak in respect of the Infrastructure Australia (Cost Benefit Analysis and Other Measures) Bill 2014. It would be nice if the Abbott government would make good on its pre-election commitment to require cost-benefit analyses of infrastructure projects of more than $100 million, but unfortunately this bill does not make good on the pre-election commitment that was made. I remind the House of that pre-election commitment:

To ensure more rigorous and transparent assessments of taxpayer-funded projects, we will require all infrastructure projects worth more than $100 million to undergo a cost benefit analysis.

This will include dams, telecommunications, hospitals, educational institutions, energy projects and water networks, but will not extend to defence projects.

Infrastructure Australia will also be required to calculate and publish the net present value of recommended infrastructure projects and to justify why a project has been recommended and prioritised.

This bill is an attempt to convince the Australian public that that commitment is being made good, but the Australian public will not be fooled by this bill. It is clear that this government has no intention of meeting its pre-election commitment to require cost-benefit analyses on projects worth more than $100 million or to publish calculations that demonstrate the significance of projects. If the government did intend to make good on the election commitment, then the government would have voted for the Labor amendments to the so-called Asset Recycling Bill earlier this year. The Asset Recycling Bill of course was more accurately named in the Senate as the 'encouraging privatisation bill'. The Asset Recycling Bill was aimed at creating a fund to encourage privatisation of assets by the states. Labor moved amendments to require that before the moneys could be spent in that way cost-benefit analyses had to be prepared and conducted, but, as history records, the government opposed those amendments. The government did not want to make good on its election commitment for cost-benefit analyses in respect of the so-called Asset Recycling Fund—better named the 'encouraging privatisation fund'.

It is a shame that this government has failed to agree to these basic transparency obligations that the government told the Australian people it would adhere to in order to get elected. We know that this is a government that would have said anything to get elected—and in fact did say anything to get elected. It is the government of no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no changes to the pension, no cuts to the ABC and SBS—all of these things that were said prior to the federal election. What is another one? No adverse changes to superannuation—that was another pre-election promise that was made. It is a government that lacks legitimacy because it said anything to get elected to convince the Australian people that it would not take the axe to superannuation, to health funding, to education funding, to SBS and the ABC, to pensions.

What have we seen, Deputy Speaker? $80 billion worth of cuts on the government's own budget papers to health and education and changes to pensions so that people will work to 70 and the pension will no longer increase in a way that meets the real cost of living increases for pensioners. This is a government that does not care about the widening inequality in Australian society, that does not care about pensioners, that goes after pensioners' ability to meet their costs of living in blatant contradiction of its election commitment that it made in order to convince the Australian public to vote for the LNP. It is a government that has decided to make cuts to funding universities, despite its commitment that there would be no cuts to education. But what have we seen? Twenty per cent cuts in funding for universities, the deregulation of fees that mean there are going to be $100,000 degrees at the University of Western Australia and new fees for research degrees, PhDs, that will put a dampener on Australia's quest to become a genuine knowledge economy. Then there is the real interest rate that will continue to compound, meaning that if you are a woman who takes time out of the workforce to raise kids, you will pay more for the same degree than a man who does not take that time out of the workforce to raise those kids. I use the gendered language advisedly, Deputy Speaker, because we know that today it is still largely women who take time out of the workforce to raise their families. It is those women who will be adversely affected by these changes and by these cuts. This is a government that is prepared to say anything in an attempt to convince and mislead the Australian public on its intentions, but this year its behaviour has been laid bare for all to see.

What have we seen? We have seen the asset recycling bill, where there was no agreement to include cost-benefit analyses. We have seen the most rotten budget in the history of Federation, the cuts to education and health, the GP tax, the changes to pharmaceutical costs.

Mr Whiteley interjecting—

I hear the member opposite laughing. I do not think it is funny that there will be people who do not go to the doctor because of what this government is doing to health. I do not think it is funny that there will be people who do not get a prescription filled because of what this government is doing to health. I do not think it is funny that there will be kids who, because they will have to choose the price of a mortgage and the price of a university degree, will decide not to follow their dream to go to university. I do not think any of that is funny. I do not find it amusing whatsoever that working-class kids and middle-class kids are going to have these new obligations on them, this lifelong debt, this compound interest rate, the cuts to higher-education funding and deregulation of fees that will lead to $100,000 degrees and the disincentive to undertake PhDs in research. None of it is even remotely amusing, and nor is this bill.

Labor supports an independent and transparent Infrastructure Australia. That is why Labor created Infrastructure Australia in 2008, making good on a pre-election promise of Kevin Rudd. That mob over there has a lot to learn from Kevin Rudd. We promised Infrastructure Australia and we delivered on it. What did they promise? They promised cost-benefit analyses for all infrastructure projects worth more than $100 million. What are they delivering? They are putting the cart before the horse. To put it politely, they have things all turned around.

Those opposite promised they would bring in cost-benefit analyses for all projects worth more than $100 million. What have we seen? We have seen the Abbott government approve massive projects such as the East West Link, WestConnex and the Perth Freight Link that have not undergone proper cost-benefit or wider analysis by Infrastructure Australia, despite being clearly within the scope of their pre-election promise. Funds have already been paid to the states for the first two projects. No cost-benefit analysis has been done but they have handed the money over to the states, saying, 'All right, we trust you. Here's the money. Off you go.' What about the cost-benefit analysis that you promised the Australian people you would undertake? What has happened to that?

The other issue with this bill is that it seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding about what a proper cost-benefit analysis process would be. A proper process would be for Infrastructure Australia to rank projects by cost-benefit analysis and other criteria before the government decision on which projects to fund. Linking the need for a cost-benefit analysis to the question of whether a project has received a level of prior Commonwealth funding completely fails to understand that proper process. If you say, 'We're going to give the people the money. We're going to fund the project and then we're going to do an analysis to find out whether we should actually do it,' that is putting the cart before the horse in a major way and it fails to understand the proper process that major stakeholders are seeking.

My voice is nearly gone, but I still have enough voice to point out the problems with this bill. We want 'assess first and fund later' not the other way around. It is not that difficult a concept. We want this bill to actually align with the coalition's pre-election commitment. I know it is a novel concept for those opposite that you keep your promises. We want to help them keep their promises just as we want to help them make good the representations they made to the people of Griffith when they said I was scaremongering about a GP tax, when we were talking about it during my by-election campaign earlier this year. The Prime Minister and the foreign minister came into town and said, 'We have got no plans for a GP tax.' We want to help you make good on that representation you made to the people of Griffith. When it comes to this bill we want to help you make good on your pre-election commitment. It was one of the things that you said in order to get elected. We want to help you meet that, because that is what we believe in. We believe in the changes that would seek cost-benefit analyses for projects of above $100 million.

It is not just me who thinks this bill does not meet the pre-election commitment made by the coalition. The Parliamentary Library's Bills Digest for this bill, in its analysis of what the bill does, says:

What the Bill does not do is fulfil the Coalition's election promise to require all Commonwealth infrastructure expenditure exceeding $100 million to be subject to analysis by Infrastructure Australia to test cost-effectiveness and financial viability.

So do not take it from me. The independent review of the bill shows that it does not meet the coalition's pre-election commitment.

At the announcement of this legislation, Anthony Albanese, the shadow minister for infrastructure and transport and member for Grayndler, made some very salient points about why this bill does not meet the pre-election commitments of the Abbott government. He said:

Tony Abbott's promise to conduct cost-benefit analysis on infrastructure projects worth more than $100 million lies in tatters a year after he made the undertaking in a speech to Canberra's National Press Club

Mr Albanese continued:

In the 2014 Budget, Mr Abbott paid billions of dollars in advance funding to road projects like Sydney's WestConnex project and Melbourne's East-West Link, despite having conducted no proper cost-benefit analysis.

The shadow minister went on to point out the breach of the promise Tony Abbott made in his own book A Strong Australia, on page 99:

There will be a published cost benefit analysis for any infrastructure project to which a Coalition government commits $100 million …

As the shadow minister said, the commitment was repeated. Since then, Mr Abbott, the Prime Minister, has scrapped public transport projects like the Melbourne Metro and one very dear to my heart the Brisbane Cross River Rail project, which had been subjected to proper analysis and judged by Infrastructure Australia to represent value for money. Cross River Rail was a very important infrastructure project for Brisbane. What do we have now that the Prime Minister has walked away from that project? We have a second-rate bus and train tunnel that has been highly controversial in Queensland.

As the shadow minister said, prior to the election the Prime Minister was prepared to say anything to illustrate his claimed interest in infrastructure investment. But, as the shadow minister said, a year later not a single infrastructure project created by the coalition has begun and the Prime Minister continues desperately to seek credit for old infrastructure projects conceived and commenced by previous Labor governments. Do you want to talk about asset recycling? This is idea recycling. This is announcement recycling by the Abbott government. We have not seen any of those new infrastructure projects. We have not seen any making good on the commitment to cost-benefit analyses. Instead we have seen budgets allocating billions of dollars to projects that have not had the rigour of an independent cost-benefit analysis from Infrastructure Australia. This is in direct contradiction to the pre-election commitment this government made. It is part of the pattern where they said one thing before the election and have done the opposite after the election—just like the cuts to education, just like the cuts to health, just like the changes to the pension, just like the cuts to the ABC and SBS, and just like the adverse changes to superannuation. This is an opportunity to start to correct that pattern—to change this bill to require those cost-benefit analyses.

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