Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

This week's budget was a perfect example of everything wrong with this government's approach to infrastructure investments: big, overhyped announcements and a desperation for newspaper front pages. After eight long years in government, that is all they think infrastructure is good for. In Labor, though, we know that infrastructure isn't about the photo-op. It isn't about news packages or splashy, misleading front pages. It's about delivery.

Infrastructure is about connecting Australians. It's about connecting people within cities, within states and across the nation. It's the road that gets our kids safely home from school. It's the train line that gets us quickly and efficiently to work in the morning, and home in time for dinner. It's the airports and the flight routes that allow us to visit our loved ones in distant corners of this vast country. It's the highway that allows truck drivers to safely transport our goods across the nation. It's the worksite where young apprentices learn their trade. It's the driver of growth where government investment is harnessed to grow Australian industries and to create new ones. It's about creating jobs in local communities. It isn't the photo-op that is important; it is the delivery. The announcement should be the smallest part of the infrastructure process, and it should be the least important, but it's the only part for which this government cares, and it's the only part that this government puts any effort into.

On average, the Morrison government break their infrastructure promises by $1.2 billion each and every year. Last year, they broke their promise by $1.7 billion. In a year where hundreds of thousands of Australians lost their jobs, the Morrison government reached new heights in their failure to deliver. At least in previous years they have waited a bit longer to disappoint Australians; this year, it was only 36 hours. On Monday, the Prime Minister and his ministers told every Australian who would listen that the budget would include a new $10 billion commitment to infrastructure projects across Australia. It all sounded good—it made for great headlines on Monday—but it simply wasn't true. The government wasn't investing an extra $10 billion in infrastructure. In reality it was delivering $3.3 billion less—a cut to infrastructure spending over the next four years. Not a boost but a cut. The government might try to deny it, but it is right there on page 84 of Budget Paper No. 1:

No amount of weasel words can hide this multibillion-dollar cut that sits at the heart of the infrastructure budget.

Neither can the government hide that over half the funding for the new projects supposedly announced on Monday wasn't included in the budget at all. Monday's announcement, frankly, was a fraud. For the Northern Territory, for example, 99 per cent of the money promised on Monday is not in the budget. Only one per cent of the money promised in the budget will go to the Northern Territory in the next four years. How much do you think that might be, given the government's claim of $10 billion? It is $4 million out of the budget for the Northern Territory over the next four years. Instead of getting highway upgrades, now they are being pushed off into the never-never. Claiming that all this money is for gas roads is nothing more than hot air from this government.

For Victoria, 87 per cent of its promised money isn't in the budget. The $2 billion commitment for the new intermodal freight hub in Melbourne's west is off-budget; it is not in the budget papers at all. We even know that the government is planning to fund it through equity investment, when or if it funds it at all. There is no location selected, and it isn't even expected to begin until 2027 at the very least. It is a mirage.

In New South Wales, well over half the newly announced funding isn't in the budget. The biggest ticket item for New South Wales, the $2 billion for the Great Western Highway upgrade, is off in the never-never. It isn't expected to be completed until 2028 at the very earliest. In New South Wales, not a single cent of new money has been committed to public transport projects, despite public transport being a major priority for the state Liberal government.

In South Australia, over a third of the money promised isn't in the budget. The biggest promise, the North-South Corridor project, is nothing more than a reheated announcement of a project that had already been announced in 2019 and won't start until 2023. Even the South Australian government has admitted that. It has been announced twice, and it got two headlines, but the government still hasn't done any work on building the thing.

When it comes to Tasmania, I think I will do best to borrow the words of my colleague the member for Lyons, who told his local paper that the promise to upgrade the Midland Highway 'has been reheated more times than a dodgy takeaway'! Good on you, Member for Lyons!

Queensland certainly got dudded. Not only is Queensland receiving less new infrastructure funding than any other state or territory per capita; Queenslanders will be left waiting years for any substantial money to flow to the projects they need. It's the same story for Western Australia, where only $81 million of new spending will go out the door next year.

For the ACT, here in Canberra, it was good that the government remembered they actually exist. But they're going to need far more than the $123 million announced to complete the Canberra light rail.

All this adds up to longer commutes, fewer safe roads, more crowded and inaccessible public transport and fewer jobs for Australians who need them now. After eight long years this government has no ideas left beyond making announcements it knows it won't deliver on and writing checks that will never be cashed. If you want to look for a really clear example of this, look no further than the Urban Congestion Fund. It is a $4 billion fund that was announced in the 2018 budget, and only $284 million has been spent. All the congestion across the country, and only a fraction of the money has gone out the door.

Of the funding announced, 83 per cent has gone to Liberal or Liberal-targeted seats. In the Treasurer's own seat of Kooyong nine projects were announced—he must have been a bit worried that election year!—dating back to the 2019 election. I'm sure he had some fun with those announcements, but not a single one of those nine projects is actually under construction—in the Treasurer's own seat. This wasn't about getting Australians home quicker and safer. It was just about making the announcement. It wasn't about putting shovels in the ground or creating jobs. It was about grabbing a headline.

Labor has a proud record on infrastructure. We didn't just announce things. We actually got on with the job of building them. Under the now Leader of the Opposition, our first-ever infrastructure minister, we delivered Tiger Brennan Drive and the Arnhem Highway in the Northern Territory. We invested a record $7.9 billion in the Pacific Highway and we built the Hunter Expressway. We doubled the federal infrastructure spend per Victorian and invested in the Regional Rail Link, benefiting my own hometown of Ballarat. We upgraded the M80 and duplicated long parts of the Princes Highway, east and west. In South Australia, we built the Northern Expressway, upgraded South Road and built new public transport, including the Noarlunga to Seaford rail extension and the Gawler line upgrade.

We didn't break our promises by over $1 billion each and every year. We actually built things. We didn't have to make up announcements, because we had achievements to be proud of. Australians don't need more cuts and more delays when it comes to infrastructure. We need infrastructure delivery now. We need those jobs now, in every town, in every city and in every region across our community. Infrastructure boosts productivity. It improves public transport. It gets people home quickly and safely. It gets our agricultural goods to market, into our supermarkets and onto our tables. As we recover from COVID, we need more jobs. When it comes down to it, that is what these failures mean: fewer jobs, longer waits in traffic, more crowded trains and fewer safety upgrades—less time at home and more time behind the wheel.

Infrastructure is important because it connects us. That is why governments absolutely must deliver on the promises they make when it comes to infrastructure. But this government doesn't deliver. It overpromises and underdelivers. In this week's budget, it cut $3.3 billion from Australian infrastructure. When it comes to infrastructure, as it is on every single front, this government is all about the photo-op and never about the follow-up.

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