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

This month's budget was an opportunity. It was an opportunity to chart Australia's path out of COVID; to deliver a recovery focused on good, secure jobs and fair pay and conditions; to build the long-term productive infrastructure Australians need to boost our productivity; and to improve public transport and get workers home more quickly, safely and cheaply. It was an opportunity to support our regions—all of them, not just those that vote for the National Party—and to deliver accessible, affordable child care; affordable housing; decent aged care of a quality that we would be happy to have our own parents in; and more support for the transition to clean energy that is happening in this country and across the world. This month's budget was an opportunity to build our nation back better, not just to fix the problems created by an eight-years-long government that has been patching up the problems that it created.

I heard the member who spoke previously say, 'Isn't it fabulous that we've now guaranteed child care for 4-year-olds'? Who were the people who didn't guarantee it, who were putting it on life support year on year? It was the Morrison government. I hear them talk about what they've done for child care. Because of the reforms they have put in place, we have seen child care become unaffordable and unviable. Who did that? It was the Morrison government. This is what this budget is. It is them fixing up problems they have created because of their own values system, because they have cut programs.

Who was it that, in fact, cut the instant asset write-off? It was these guys. The Morrison government did it. Now they're saying: 'Let's forget about all the last eight years and all the terrible things we did, all the terrible cuts and the loss of apprentices and trainees. Let's pretend none of that happened and let's fix all that and then we want you to congratulate us for fixing all the problems we created.' That's what this budget does. It says, 'Here are the problems we're fixing,' but it actually doesn't say: what are the things that we want to see this country develop and do into the future? How do we make sure that we have secure jobs in this country? How do we make sure that we actually build this nation better for those who are coming after us? That is what this budget doesn't do, and it is a huge missed opportunity.

Again, it is about the nature of this government. It's focused on marketing and spin. After eight long years, it's no longer interested in anything other than being in power. That is what the purpose of this government is. When you look back on this eight long years, you go: 'What was the point of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government? What was the point of this government?' It was to keep themselves in power. It was not to improve the nation, not to improve productivity or to actually make Australians' lives better. It was just simply to stay in power.

That's despite spending almost $100 billion—it's unimaginable—and wracking up $1 trillion of debt. Remember it called us the party of debt and deficit, with the debt trucks going around? It has no economic credibility now. Despite doing that, the budget actually reveals that real wages will go backwards. Despite spending $100 billion and racking up, again, a record $1 trillion of debt, it doesn't leave any legacy. Despite the big promises, it actually cut infrastructure spending by $3.3 billion over the next four years from what it was promising it would be spending.

The day before the budget, the Prime Minister and his ministers told every Australian who would listen that the budget would include a new $10 billion for infrastructure projects around Australia. It made for quite a few headlines, but it simply was not true. The government wasn't investing an extra $10 billion in infrastructure. In reality it was delivering a $3.3 billion cut to infrastructure spending over the next four years. Ever since the budget was published, the government has been trying to say: 'It's not a cut. This is how they always spin these things.' But it's there on page 84 of Budget Paper No. 1. It states:

… payments relating to the Infrastructure Investment Program, which are expected to decrease by … ($3.3 billion over the four years to 2023-24) …

I don't know what a decrease is other than a cut. It's a cut. No number of weasel words can hide the fact that it is a cold, hard cut. Nor can the government hide that, of the new projects and new funding announced in the days before the budget, well over half of the funding isn't included in the budget at all. It's beyond the forward estimates, on the never-never, on that sort of fiscal cliff that they leave to incoming governments, saying, 'You figure out how you're going to fund any of that into the future.' The money isn't actually there.

The government's infrastructure announcements were a fraud, once again, but the government didn't care about that. It wasn't worried about delivering infrastructure. It was worried about the announcements. It put all of the effort into the announcements, into the media, but not into the delivery. That's why it rolled out overhyped and overpumped announcements for each state and territory. I want to take you through those.

In the Northern Territory, 99 per cent of the money they promised on that day is not actually in the budget. How much of the new money do you think the Territory will get over the next four years? It's $4 million. It doesn't go very far when you're talking about infrastructure. Instead of getting highway upgrades now, they're been pushed off to the never-never. For Victoria, 87 per cent of the promised money isn't in the budget. The $2 billion so-called commitment to a new intermodal freight hub in Melbourne's north or west is off budget. It has no settled location. It isn't expected to even begin until 2027. It will be dependent on matching Victorian government funding. The department was unable to tell us whether it is even actual money or whether it's going to be an equity funded commitment. We just don't know. At the moment, it's not worth the paper it's written on.

In New South Wales well over half of the newly announced funding isn't in the budget. The biggest-ticket item for New South Wales, $2 billion for the Great Western Highway upgrade, is again not in the forward estimates and isn't expected to be completed until 2028 at the earliest. In estimates this week, nobody had a clue when the money would even start to flow. 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. When this was pointed out to officials, you know what they said? They said: 'Oh, don't worry about that. Buses can go on those new roads. That's our public transport commitment.' It pretty much sums up the approach this government has to public transport.

In South Australia over a third of the money promised is not in the budget and the biggest promise, the north-south corridor project, is nothing more than a reheated announcement of a project that had already been announced back in 2019 and still won't start until 2023. Even the South Australian government has told us that. There were two announcements but no work on delivering a thing. What good is that for commuters today?

In Tasmania it's the same thing. The promise to upgrade the Midland Highway has been reheated more times than a dodgy takeaway to once again borrow the phrase of the member for Lyons. The half-billion-dollar Bridgewater bridge project continues to languish, and the government can't even reach agreement on which congestion-busting projects in Hobart it will fund.

Queensland missed out, with less new infrastructure funding per head than any other state or territory. What money does flow Queenslanders will be left waiting years for. It's the same story in Western Australia, where only $81.1 million of new spending will go out the door.

What all this adds up to is longer communities, less safe roads, more crowded and inaccessible public transport and fewer jobs for Australians who need them today. After eight long years, this government has no ideas left beyond making announcements they know they won't deliver on, writing cheques that simply cannot be cashed.

Infrastructure is important. It's an enabler. Infrastructure connects Australians and opens our economy. It connects 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 that gets us quickly and efficiently to work in the morning and home in time for dinner. It's the airports and flight routes that allow us to visit our loved ones in distant corners of this vast country. It's the highway which safely allows truck drivers to transport our goods across the nation. It's the freight routes that get our farmers' produce to customers here in Australia and around the world. It's the work site where apprentices learn their trade and 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. That's what we're missing out on under this government. There is no procurement policy, no link of these billions of dollars of infrastructure that they say they're spending to actually increase the number of apprentices and trainees in this country, and then they have the gall in this budget to cut?

Their billion-dollar broken promises each and every year have had a real impact. It's an impact felt in fewer jobs, less time at home and more costs for commuters. Its impact is felt in project delays and cancellations. We got a prime example of that just last week with five more commuter car parks across Melbourne cancelled, two in the electorate of Dunkley and one in Macnamara. If you want to see an example writ large of just how this government operates when it comes to infrastructure, you only have to look at this Urban Congestion Fund and the commuter car parks that are part of it. This was a fund announced in the 2018 budget, a few years ago now. In the 2019 election campaign the Liberal Party ran around the country. There were a few seats they were a bit nervous about, particularly in inner-city Liberal leafy suburbs. They sprayed out this Urban Congestion Fund money all over the place, 83 per cent of it in coalition and targeted seats. They sprayed it on projects that they've not talked to state governments about and not talked to local councils about, and now they're having to clean up the mess because they can't deliver on them. That's the problem. This week at estimates the government couldn't rule out that there would be more cancellations of those Urban Congestion Fund projects.

The Morrison government never had any intention to deliver some of these car parks it's cancelled. In the heat of the election campaign, as we saw, they went around making these promises, and yet you only have to look at where these announcements are to see how they treated taxpayers' funding when it came to this. Once the election was over, their interest in actually delivering seemed to wane. No wonder Australians don't trust this government and its promises, because they're not worth the press releases that they're written on.

We know that, just yesterday, survey results released by the Australian Automobile Association showed that the average Australian household spent $354 per week on transport over the first quarter of 2021. This represents a 14.3 per cent increase over the previous quarter, the largest jump on record. With the Morrison government cutting infrastructure spending by $3.3 billion in the next four years and cancelling projects across Melbourne, costs for Australian commuters are only going to rise even further.

Again, we've seen over the government's term in office that it likes to talk about its delivery of infrastructure but it loves even more to talk about the projects that Labor delivered, claiming them as its own. We've seen the Bolivia Hill upgrades in New England, the Princes Highway duplication and Bruce Highway projects—all projects that a Labor government actually delivered.

Briefly, in the time I have left, I want to talk a little bit about regional Australia and regional development. In particular, one of the major problems that we're having in our communities at the moment is around affordable housing. The government's approach to regional development, frankly, is incredibly disappointing. Instead of investing equally in the regions, they use the budget to top up the slush funds that are ready to be pulled out again ahead of the next election campaign. Ahead of the last election, coalition seats or target seats received 94 per cent of projects and 94 per cent of all money through the infrastructure component of the Building Better Regions Fund, and the government have topped this fund up with another round in the budget. A hundred and twelve of the 330 projects approved under that round of the program were approved by a secret ministerial panel against the recommendations of the department. Independent grant processes are designed to try and make sure that communities are supported across this country and that the projects have proper value for money. The government is in the process of assessing round 5, and we'll be scrutinising the allocation of those funds very closely. For my own community of Ballarat, it's incredibly disappointing to see the Morrison government treat people in my community with contempt. What it's done with its regional portfolio, frankly, has become quite obscene. The sort of money that you see poured into National Party and Liberal Party seats—the slush funding—has gone absolutely beyond a joke, and I'm very glad that the Audit Office is looking closely at the Building Better Regions Fund.

What the government should have done in this budget is also commit funding for social housing in our regions. We know that housing has become simply unaffordable for many people who live in our communities. Access to affordable rental accommodation and to low-cost affordable housing for home ownership is simply not there at the moment, and this government had no answer to that. The policies they have put in place are, in fact, actually inflationary and are making it harder for people in my community to obtain housing. Labor's going to change things, and Labor's very determined that there be better and more affordable housing in the regions.

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