Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I know what they did, and it was very, very poorly managed. What I was fascinated about was that the member for Lilley had some comments to make about infrastructure. I must say, I would have thought that the best spending to deal with the global financial crisis may have been to spend on infrastructure, but what major projects were started by Labor to improve infrastructure around Australia? There were none. The reason there were none was that, if you went to a state like mine, which had had Labor governments for so long, they had been so good at making announcements about new plans, they had nothing that was shovel ready; nothing that you could actually do.

We are now in a situation—I marvel at the fact that we are told there is no infrastructure occurring at the moment—where we are seeing infrastructure in my electorate that we have never seen contemplated before. We are getting the North West Rail Link. You can come along and you can see the stations that have been started at Castle Hill and at Cherrybrook. You can see the tunnels that are being built. They have a project that is in fact progressing and was shovel ready. It has been put in place by a Liberal government in New South Wales after a very short period in office. We had plenty of announceables for decades but very little that was achieved.

I wanted to make my comments today about infrastructure in this debate, because my electorate is now starting to benefit from the fact that we are getting infrastructure spending. One of the things about my electorate is that I think, when Labor governments were in office, they never wanted to spend any money—and I think sometimes even Liberals thought: 'It's one of ours and we don't need to spend it either.' But when the problems emerge in the Labor electorates a little north of mine, they suddenly find that maybe there was a problem in the electorate of Berowra after all.

I want to talk about that, because we have recently had an infrastructure audit released. For those members who have heard me speak about these matters before, they will know I have focused on a road called—don't say they can't tell me? Pennant Hills Road. Pennant Hills Road is remarkable. We have B-doubles careering down it mixed with parents taking their kids to school and people wanting to get from the Central Coast through the city of Sydney. We have roads that cross Sydney—four major highways: the M7, the Cumberland Highway, Villawood Road and Silverwater Road—and they all finish on Pennant Hills Road to link with the M1 out of Sydney that takes the traffic to Newcastle and Brisbane. That road is absolutely clogged all the time. It has been found in the infrastructure audit to be the worst corridor in the country.

I have stood up on this issue for years. I have made the point over a long period of time that something is necessary, and we now have a situation in which this issue is being addressed. I have been able to stand on sites with the minister who assists in relation to infrastructure, Mr Briggs. We have been able to turn the first shovel for the tunnelling that is going to occur on this route.

This is a $3 billion NorthConnex project. It is one that is committed to by the Commonwealth and the state of New South Wales. It has taken a long time but it is absolutely essential not just for my electorate but for the electorates of Reid, Parramatta and the Central Coast seats that have all been affected by this horrible situation. I have always agonised that we may see a major accident with deaths involving these huge trucks that just should not be mixed with suburban traffic. I have spoken on it year after year and I am delighted that we are now seeing this project come to fruition.

The big thing about this budget is that it is going to enable other projects to be addressed, particularly in our state of New South Wales. We have in New South Wales a state government that is now going to reinvest the proceeds of the state's electricity privatisation to help with both road and rail projects. They are investing $15 billion in infrastructure for the 21st century in New South Wales. I think these projects will be of enormous benefit to the people of Sydney and the people of New South Wales, who have been neglected for so long. This budget will enable those projects to be addressed.

For too long, parents across the country have been denied important childcare choices due to the complex, inflexible and unaffordable system that has existed. I am looking forward to the benefits that families in my electorate will obtain as a result of our new childcare package. It will provide greater choice; it is going to help more than 1.2 million families; it will deliver a simpler, more affordable and more flexible scheme; and it is a part of the budget that I think is going to be extraordinarily important to my electorate, given its nature.

My electorate has many small businesses. One of the things that has impressed me about this budget is the strategic approach that has been taken to dealing with a very significant deficit issue. We know that the opposition, the minority parties and others in the Senate will continue to attempt to deny us the opportunity to put in place measures that would enable us to address the expenditure side of the budget, but I was astonished at the way the former Treasurer would not take responsibility for the fact that Labor in government were always advocating increased spending on health, education and disabilities. They never put their proposed extra spending into the forward estimates. In other words, they never told anyone how they were going to pay for it all. Now, when we argue that you can fund these areas out of growth—growth arising out of initiatives that have been put in place for small business—they suggest that we are in fact a high-tax party.

I was astonished to hear the member for Lilley arguing that he was concerned that, through incremental creep, there may be an additional tax take. I have not heard the opposition outline any substantial program for containing growth in expenditure. It troubles me enormously that they continue to live in a cocoon—they do not understand the reality of budgeting. We have to deal with that and I think this budget is particularly imaginative, because it has identified that by giving some incentives to small business you can create new opportunities for growth in employment. When you get growth in employment, you get increased taxation revenue. If businesses become more productive through the measures we have in place, there will be growth in the economy.

Something I have always been distressed about is that the real priorities that ought to be recognised by governments—and that is protecting Australia and Australians—are often neglected. We have not only had to deal with the budget deficit situation and the demands for increased expenditure in many areas of social policy; we have had to find additional resources to address our security. This budget has boosted counterterrorism funding for law enforcement, intelligence and security agencies by $1.1 billion. That is a particularly heavy demand on the budget. Despite their neglect in this area, it is something that Labor will tell us now that they support. Finding the resources to do it—to combat terrorism at home and to deter people from being involved in terrorist acts—has been difficult, but resourcing of those organisations was absolutely essential. We have been able, in a budget which is tremendously constrained, to do just that.

There are other measures that I think are important that we will be resourcing. I believe very strongly in the need to ensure that our organisations are not compromised by not having the capacity to investigate matters. I know not everybody always agreed that metadata issues were important, but the funding for that, which is now included in the budget, will be essential in ensuring that we are able to undertake effective counter-terrorism investigations, as well as detecting and prosecuting other crimes.

This budget is one that achieves enormously for the Australian community in a constrained environment where we were left with very significant deficits. We have been given no assistance in relation to dealing with those matters. This budget is particularly imaginative in the way in which it has identified that there are other ways to produce growth that will enable us to address the budget deficit over time. The government ought to be congratulated on the way in which it has approached these issues in such an imaginative way.

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