Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I have already been critical of this project before. I have no problem criticising this project, because it does not do what it is supposed to do. There are already concerns about the management of that process, there are already concerns about the travel forecast and there are already concerns about the secrecy that is entailed around this project. The fact of the matter is that the coalition put $1.5 billion with no strings. The coalition did not say that it should definitely go into the city and they did not say that it should definitely go to the airport. The coalition is happy to impose tolls on a roadway that has already been paid for. That is scandalous.

But guess what? There was no cost-benefit analysis when they chucked $1.5 billion at that project. There was none whatsoever. There was the dodgy cost-benefit analysis that was done nearly a year after the coalition had been in office on the NBN, but there is no cost-benefit analysis on some of these other big infrastructure projects. We are expected to just basically pat the coalition on the back for finally getting around to doing something that they said was a big deal, after one year of being in office and billions being spent on infrastructure in the way that it is.

I heard the member for Banks earlier give his fractured fairy tale account of how the NBN went. A person who came from a sector that depends on good infrastructure in terms of broadband and communications and someone who has been involved in the digital economy bagging out the NBN is simply bizarre; but the fact of the matter is that he was wrong. The fact of the matter is that when the coalition was in government last time, they tried nearly 20 times to get broadband sorted out in this country.

The big sticking block for the coalition was that they could never get past Telstra. Telstra commanded the telecommunications industry. Basically, if it did not agree to something, nothing happened in terms of broadband. Go and ask Helen Coonan what type of blues she had with them. When Telstra did put forward plans on what they would do on broadband, they wanted to have a rate of return that the ACCC went pink on the face on and that the ACCC did not allow to happen.

When we got into government and we put forward the proposition that we wanted to upgrade broadband in this country through the National Broadband Network, we put aside a shade under $5 billion and we asked everyone to tender for it. The biggest telecommunications company and the sole tenderer at that time put in five pages for a $5 billion project. They put in five pages as a tender for a $5 billion project. Those five pages were not about a question of quantity over quality. Tender projects should not just be about reams of paper. What it said clearly was that they were not willing to play and that they would do what they always did in Telstra's case, which is to be litigious, take you through courts and make you get to plan 20—after the coalition had tried 19 times before—of trying to improve broadband in this country. It failed.

So we took the view that we would undertake landmark reform in telecommunications, we would basically do the job through a GBE that would be set up and we would ensure structural separation with Telstra. We went through that project. That was based on the public wanted, which was better broadband. What the coalition wanted to do was go through a cost-benefit analysis. That was not for the sake of going for a cost-benefit analysis to improve the project, but to delay the project.

When I had constituent forums in my electorate, I would have Liberal plants in the audience say, 'You should go through a cost-benefit analysis.' I said, 'You know what, I will not go to the politics of it. I will just ask the crowd.' These were people who had been struggling with pair-gain systems, faulty broadband networks in their area and ADSL that was not delivering to them. They were basically frustrated to their back teeth with poor infrastructure. When I asked them what they wanted, I would say to them, 'Do you want a cost-benefit analysis or do you want us to get the job done?' They unanimously said that they wanted better broadband. They do not need a cost-benefit analysis, because they have been waiting for so long and the coalition has failed to deliver. That is exactly what is happening under the coalition's regime now, where the rate of connections is dropping and the speed at which the coalition is rolling out the network is dropping. But they have got their cost-benefit analysis, so kudos there! The coalition has got their bit of paper. But the things that are required by the general public are not delivered.

Let us go to another big project that is going on right now. In January 2013, when the coalition was quizzed about it, they said they had no plans for a second airport at Badgerys Creek. That is what the coalition said. By the end of the year, the coalition was basically gearing up to make an announcement to build a second airport in Sydney. Where was the cost-benefit analysis on that? Billions of dollars were committed to that project. The coalition has already started the roadworks on that project as well. There is no cost-benefit analysis—none whatsoever—on a project that will have billions of dollars put to it.

The coalition has all sorts of figures about what it is going to do. They have dangled the whole jobs thing in front of people and suggested that it would be a big jobs creator, creating 5,000 jobs. We got that figure from a briefing that was convened by the Deputy Prime Minister, who then deigned not to turn up to the briefing and explain to Western Sydney MPs what would happen. That is 5,000 jobs in a region where there are nearly two million people. That is roughly one job for every 400 people in Western Sydney.

The coalition is going to commit all of this money to roadworks and all this money to the airport itself, but they have not put in a cost-benefit analysis on it whatsoever. We have seen enough examples of that in the international space and even here in Australia. Go to Avalon and see the glory that is supposed to be a second airport operating in one metropolitan area and you can see what is happening there. Go to Canada and see what has happened over in Montreal, where they have had a second airport there that is on its last legs as well. We are now committing to a similar sort of thing in building a second airport in one metropolitan area where there are concerns about its future financial viability.

The job figures are not fair dinkum. They are providing a figure of 60,000 jobs—which, by the way, is double the amount of jobs that are provided by Sydney Airport—for a configuration that is one runway and will only really provide 5,000 jobs. There is no cost-benefit analysis. On top of that, a 24-hour-a-day airport is going to be plonked right in the middle of one of the fastest-growing regions in the country, with two million people, and there is no environmental impact statement for that airport at all.

The thing that gets me is the fact that, due to the decisions of this mob opposite, the electorate that I represent is going to lose $270 million in schools funding over 10 years, and the university that is in our region will face up to 40 per cent in funding cuts, which will force people in the region that I live in to pay higher university fees to make up for those cuts, yet I cannot get things like an MRI for my local hospital. Those opposite will not fund that, and they cut funding to state governments for health care. They cut billions—$80 billion in combined cuts to health and education—they pushed through the changes on higher education, they force through cuts to family payments, they force people to pay to see a doctor, yet all the things that we need in our area are not delivered to the people that need those things the most. They do not get the service and infrastructure that they need, but they get an airport. They get a 24-hour-a-day airport with no cost-benefit analysis and no EIS. They are forced to have it because eastern suburbs interests want to have this airport plonked in Western Sydney. Those opposite do not give us the infrastructure that we want or the services that we want and need. Instead, they give us what they think we need, which has been the case for development in Western Sydney for quite some time.

Again, this is a bill where the cart is put before the horse and billions of dollars are committed on projects where no cost-benefit analysis is done. Those opposite have worked hard to cripple Infrastructure Australia's independence in its decision-making processes, and then we get this legislation as an afterthought. It is almost as though someone tapped the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister for Infrastructure on the shoulder and reminded them that there is one outstanding thing stuck on the Post-it note that needs to be dealt with, so they cobbled this together and put it into parliament. It is an absolute farce in terms of what it does. It is not right for the nation.

Within cities, we should be able to have better ways to move people from one part of the city to another, to support economic development and decentralise economic development so that we do not have the pressure on transport systems. We should be able to find ways to make public transport work better. In my part of the world, people want to be able to catch a bus or a train to get to work. I am not Robinson Crusoe in this, and I am certain that there will be other members in the chamber who often have constituents come up to them and say, 'I would love to catch public transport; where do I park my car?' and point to a street with no facilities that is already jam-packed.

There should be clever thinking and there should be collaboration between federal, state and local governments to ensure that we provide facilities that better utilise public transport. I wonder if the federal government is doing anything on this issue. I wonder if the Abbott government has actually thought, 'How do we utilise existing infrastructure better by investing in other assets that allow people to use that infrastructure better?' The Abbott government has cut pretty much all spending to public transport infrastructure. There is nothing available at all to better use—

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