Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was very interested in the previous contribution and the talk about the need for us to be thoughtful, careful and methodical in our infrastructure planning and not to make the prioritisation of projects a political plaything. I think the Infrastructure Australia Amendment (Cost Benefit Analysis and Other Measures) Bill 2014 takes us backwards in that regard.

Infrastructure Australia was set up by the previous Labor government to ensure that we indeed had thoughtful, careful and methodical planning of our infrastructure and an assessment of cost-benefit analysis. The federal government had originally tried to avoid the commitment they made at the election that every project over $100 million would be assessed by Infrastructure Australia. They fell foul of the Senate when they initially tried to move a set of amendments to the Infrastructure Australia legislation to remove the requirement for this assessment. That was rejected.

Now they are supposedly honouring this commitment, but in the most bizarre way. The commitment now is: 'We will assess this infrastructure once we have already approved it. Once we have approved it and provided the federal funds for the infrastructure under this scheme, we will do the assessment.' What is the point of that? The whole idea of having an Infrastructure Australia assessment and determining a cost-benefit analysis and what other externalities of value there may be is that you use that to prioritise the expenditure. But what we are doing here turns the entire thing on its head. It is saying, 'We are going to prioritise and make our decisions, and after we have made our decisions we are going to go off and do an Infrastructure Australia assessment.' It simply does not make sense.

Let us look at this in the context of the project that we are supposedly going to see in Western Australia—that is, the Perth Freight Link. The Perth Freight Link was announced with great fanfare. I think it was leaked to one of the Western Australian papers in advance of the budget. Then in due course it was announced in the budget. The Perth Freight Link comprises three components: the Roe Highway extension, with eight kilometres of road, a reconfiguration of Stock Road and a reconfiguration of High Street. The Roe Highway extension makes up about two-thirds of the project's overall cost, at about $740 million. The remainder of that project is $460 million. It is a pretty sizeable item of expenditure.

After the announcement we heard Assistant Minister Briggs say at a press conference that the cost-benefit analysis of the project was 'out of the ballpark, that it is over five'. The cost-benefit analysis showed that it had a benefit-to-cost ratio of more than five to one. We subsequently found out that that was only a draft cost-benefit analysis and it was not available for anyone to see—and it was certainly not anything that could be used to found the prioritisation of the project. More significantly, it transpires that this indeed related to only one part of the project, the Roe Highway extension.

In the state parliament, after the announcement was made that we were going to get the Perth Freight Link, questions were asked of the Commissioner of Main Roads. He was asked about the estimation of the $460 million that had been allocated to the non Roe Highway parts of the project and whether or not this represented a reasonable cost estimate. Let alone the cost-benefit, was it a reasonable cost estimate? The commissioner said:

… it is too early to talk about both Stock Road and High Street because we are still looking at some different design options.

The parliamentary secretary representing the state minister said:

The commonwealth has a propensity to make these announcements, as you well know, but the reality is that the Main Roads department and this government will be implementing and designing the Roe 8 extension, and at this stage we have not actually got design plans that are worthy of public scrutiny …

Here you have a parliamentary secretary of a Liberal government in Western Australia saying, 'We do not actually have design plans that are worthy of public scrutiny,' yet we have a government telling us that they are going about infrastructure planning in a thoughtful, careful and methodical way and that this is not a political plaything.

It is quite clear that this concept of the freight link was hastily patched together to try to cover this hole that was in the budget because they were taking out the $500 million that was in the previous budget for important and much in-demand rail extension projects in Perth. These were projects which had been committed to by the state Liberal government of the day, saying that they would be reliant on federal government support. Because they were taking that money out they had to come up with another project, so they hastily cobbled together this notion of the Perth Freight Link. This is a project which, quoting government members in Western Australia, is not at a stage where one can make a reasonable cost estimate of it because we have not actually got design plans that are worthy of public scrutiny. Yet apparently we have made a decision in our budget that this project is going to get funding. Do not come in here and talk to us about your careful, thoughtful and methodical planning. We are back to the good old days of the RONPIs—the roads of National Party importance—except this time expanded out so we get a few roads.

I put in an FOI request to the federal minister's office for the details he has of this project. The really amazing thing is that, while this is a major project which has apparently been the subject of careful, methodical and thoughtful planning, the minister apparently has only one set of emails in his office relating to this entire project. That is a pretty extraordinary set of circumstances. It is also quite amusing when we actually see the one email chain that was apparently the only thing in the minister's office about this project. It was a series of emails that started from the federal infrastructure department to the state main roads department, and their subject was 'the Perth Freight Link'. They said, 'We understand Minister Briggs is planning a visit to the site of the Perth Freight Link on Monday. Could you urgently send us some locations?' They said, 'If it can be in the electorates of Swan or Tangney that would be ideal but not necessary.' It was obviously not a political decision at all! It was clearly not a political prioritisation—it just so happened they would have liked it to be either in Swan or Tangney!

The Main Roads state agency were obviously concerned. The first email that came back said, 'Hi Allan and Peter. Can you advise if you know any more?' Then the next person sent it on to someone else, asking 'Do you know anything about this, guys?' And the next guy asked, 'Are you able to help on this? Main Roads has been approached about this. We are interested, of course, but our office has not received any contact as yet, so we are a bit in the dark.' Interestingly, this matter was not described by Main Roads as 'the Perth Freight Link'; they called it 'Truss coming here for a Roe 8 thing?'

We quite clearly have a situation where, in my view, the old, very controversial Roe Highway stage 8 project, which has been around for some 15 years, has been dressed up, covered and surrounded with a few other very expensive bits and pieces—$460 million of extra pieces—and been called 'the Perth Freight Link'. It is quite clear that there has been no detailed, thoughtful, careful or methodical planning of this at all. Indeed, what we are going to see with this project is very much the government's vision—the prioritisations will be made on a purely political basis. There will be a post decision-making process whereby these projects will be looked at by Infrastructure Australia. But it will be to undermine the very essence of this project.

We know that the government is continuing to have problems on this and of even coming to terms with the nature of this project. We had that very fabulous, very switched-on, lovely man—the assistant minister, Minister Briggs—last week telling a tunnelling conference: 'In Perth, Western Australia, we have committed to the Perth Freight Link, which is, for those of you not from Western Australia, the railway extension that will have a dedicated freight route all the way past the airport to Fremantle Port.' That is absolutely brilliant! It is apparently a railway project! Again, this goes to show the amount of thoughtful, careful planning that has gone into this cobbled-together process.

Of course, we do need more infrastructure funds in Western Australia. I just want to correct something for the record. Minister Briggs has shown that he cannot read his own budget papers. He contested my claim about WA's unfair deals. Let me spell out some of the numbers here. The Grants Commission's estimates for WA's population for 2014-15, which is the relevant figure that we should be using, is 11.1 per cent—not the 10.8 per cent claimed by the assistant minister. Secondly, WA has been allocated $4.7 billion of the total allocated budget of $45.3 billion—that is 10.37 per cent, not 11.7 per cent. The assistant minister really needs to get across the details of WA funding and show us where he got this 11.7 per cent figure for WA's share of infrastructure funding.

Even if it was 11.7 per cent, that simply is not good enough. Western Australia produces over 16 per cent of Australia's GDP. We are being absolutely unfairly dealt with under the Howard GST agreement. The only way of rectifying this in the short term is for WA to get a decent and fair share of the infrastructure budget. I will say again that the budget papers show that Western Australia will get 10.37 per cent—much less than half of the figure going to Queensland. This treatment of Western Australia is simply not acceptable.

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