Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Deputy Speaker, and I congratulate you for your elevation to the chair. It is befitting that a fellow Queenslander is in the chamber today.

I rise today to speak in support of the Infrastructure Australia Amendment (Cost Benefit Analysis and Other Measures) Bill 2014. The bill amends the Infrastructure Australia Act 2008 to clarify the legislation and administrative arrangements for Infrastructure Australia. It will enable a reordering of previsions pertaining to cost-benefit analyses of infrastructure proposals in the act to ensure that these analyses form the evaluation proposals.

The bill makes provision for Infrastructure Australia to evaluate proposals involving Commonwealth funding of at least $100 million. I note that this involves a clarification and the bill is of an administrative nature not involving financial or regulatory impacts. In fact, Infrastructure Australia has already been tasked with acting on these new administrative arrangements. Bringing this bill before parliament and the Australian people is essentially about transparency and ensuring that all Australians are well informed about the changes that will impact on their lives. Most importantly, it is about ensuring that taxpayer dollars are well spent.

Impacting Australian lives for the better is in itself quite meaningful when you look at the importance of well-directed infrastructure spending in Australia. Reliable and cutting-edge essential infrastructure is not only a defining feature of a prosperous and developed economy but is also not surprisingly a cornerstone of what the coalition government promised to deliver to Australians. I recall Prime Minister Tony Abbott's words upon being elected:

… we'll build the roads of the 21st century because I hope to be an infrastructure prime minister who puts bulldozers on the ground and cranes into our skies.

The Prime Minister has been very busy making good on this promise ever since, with a staggering $50 billion of the Infrastructure Investment program committed in the May budget. That is a staggering $16.4 billion more than Labor promised. In fact, Labor not only promised less but took what it did have and used it for indiscriminate, undirected, even random infrastructure spending at enormous cost to the Australian taxpayer. At an Infrastructure Partnerships Australia address the Prime Minister made the extent of these indiscretions very clear when he said:

… there has not been a single cost-benefit analysis published prior to any of this government's infrastructure commitments.

He said, when he talking about the previous government:

Every single programme and project has gone ahead because it has suited the government's political agenda. Whether it actually met the long-term economic needs of our nation has never been the government's main concern. The result is an infrastructure spending gap that Infrastructure Partnerships Australia estimates would cost $800 billion over the next decade to fill. There is a better way. The Coalition has a plan for Australia's infrastructure of the future.

In stark contrast to Labor, we do have a better way. The coalition's $50 billion fund will be used to deliver vital transport infrastructure across our cities and our regional and rural centres, removing the black spots and ensuring that no Australian community will ever be forgotten and no Australian community will ever lag behind. Coming from the state of Queensland, I can speak from experience about what it means to be forgotten and to lag behind, because we have—and did have—some of the worst infrastructure in Australia. Given that the Bruce Highway singularly accounts for the worst record of deaths of any roads, we cannot afford any more neglect. The Bligh Labor government certainly did our state absolutely no favours in this regard. As Australia's second largest state, Queensland's economic wellbeing is very heavily dependent on infrastructure development. That is why Labor's appalling neglect just does not add up.

The Abbott government will bring back to life what should have been an intrinsic link between infrastructure and its development, and economic prosperity. We understand that better roads and rail networks deliver savings in key areas. They bring time savings; they make it easier to get freight around; they make it easier to move around our rural and regional cities; they bring cost savings, as travel times and, therefore, fuel costs are cut, so we can spend much less time travelling to and from work; and they bring life savings. With my state of Queensland being a case in point, the coalition's commitment of $6.7 billion, with a further 20 per cent being committed by the Queensland state government, may save up to 40 lives a year. That is a lot when you think that one death is too many and all deaths are unnecessary. Time savings are also likely to provide an incentive for safer driving practices in industries such as trucking, where a large amount of time is spent on roads. For many of us, improved vital infrastructure represents a better work-life balance. For others, it can mean all the difference in the world.

Investment in infrastructure is essential for our growth as a nation, with a population growth rate, according to the ABS census data from 2013, averaging 1.7 per cent, or close to 396,000, across Australia. If our investment in roads and other transport networks—the infrastructure today that Australians rely upon—fails to keep pace with this rapid population growth, it will negatively impact on our social and economic fabric. And that is just not the way that we as a nation want to be identified. Rather, we need to set before us the goal of being progressive and being as efficient a society as we can possibly be.

It is in this context that the Abbott government has brought this bill before the House, not as a legal necessity but as a government willing to show its hand and to keep all Australians well informed of the changes that impact on lives. The bill reflects the coalition's recognition that reliable and efficient infrastructure has an operational foundation. It involves sizeable projects, all three levels of government and a significant coordination requirement. Prior to the 2013 election, we indicated that we would create an expert advisory body, Infrastructure Australia, that was much stronger, much more independent and much more transparent. The vision for Infrastructure Australia was that it would be an expert advisory body and that it would facilitate effective coordination between industries, states and territories, particularly in prioritising and advising on infrastructure proposals.

I am really pleased to say today that Infrastructure Australia is truly—and, when I say truly, I do mean truly—an independent advisory body, with the CEO responsible to a board and a new chair, Mark Birrell. It will provide an assessment every five years on long-term infrastructure needs. It will inform budgetary and political processes well before it becomes critical for decisions to be made, and estimates will be indexed to ensure relativity. The Abbott government is well advanced in achieving these improvements on the operational efficiency for large infrastructure projects, having tasked Infrastructure Australia to assess projects—receiving government funding of $100 million or more. It will publish reports on its website as a transparent advice to government. It will audit nationally significant priorities. It will development a 15-year plan on infrastructure priorities, to be delivered in 2015, as well.

It is also noteworthy that work on the promised national infrastructure audit has been in consultation with state and territory governments—again consistent with our commitment to ensure coordinated responses to infrastructure needs. It is also noteworthy that Infrastructure Australia remains a key advisory body with an independent view. It is not a decision maker in terms of funding allocation. These decisions and these processes will remain the domain of the government of the day. Decisions will be the result of a publicly informed political process and, importantly, the result of a robust cost-benefit analysis.

It was only in recent times that we recoiled in absolute horror as our Minister for Communications, the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull, spelt out clearly for us the terrible price to be paid for the Labor Party's complete lack of regard for due diligence, particularly when it was dealing with the NBN project. He said, 'Labor is in denial about the NBN failures under its watch.'

There must never again be a big government project undertaken without a cost-benefit analysis.

A big project without a cost benefit analysis—and the NBN could not get any bigger. A cost-benefit analysis for the NBN has finally been concluded and, after the fact, the results speak for themselves. Providing fast broadband to the bush through wireless and satellite services will cost nearly $5 billion but produce only $600 million in economic benefits—a return of just 10 per cent,

But what is the use of a cost-benefit analysis now? This insidious piece of poor decision making and politicking has left us rolling out an expensive, inefficient network, which was a second-rate solution from its inception in the minds of a seemingly mindless opposition. Should Labor ever again see the light of day in government, we will certainly be ready to hold them to account, with an expectation that it will take a leaf out of our book and never again act with such contempt for the trust and the hopes of the people they are meant to responsibly represent. In Minister Turnbull's words:

The screamingly important message is: why wasn't a cost-benefit analysis done beforehand? There must never again be a big government project undertaken without a cost-benefit analysis.

The coalition now makes good on this promise. There will be no NBN style disasters on our watch. The Abbott government's good news story is that improved planning and advice will ensure infrastructure and therefore the standard of living of all Australians will be improved for decades to come.

Improved coordination and prioritisation will eliminate the waste and duplication we have become accustomed to. Australians deserve to reap the benefits of taxpayers' dollars being well spent. We can ill afford the alternative—that is, costs that are borne by all Australians on numerous levels. I realise that there is no small change involved when we are dealing with infrastructure investment. But I believe I can rest my case in demonstrating that efficiently-allocated and well-prioritised infrastructure spending is beneficial for all Australians. This bill is about positioning Australia well into the 21st century as a growing and prosperous economy and I commend it to the House.

See this speech in context