Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to contribute to the debate on the Infrastructure Australia Amendment (Independent Review) Bill 2023. Doing infrastructure right is something the community of North Sydney is passionate about. Rising road congestion, crowding on public transport and growing demands on social infrastructure, including health, education and green space, are all key challenges for Australia's governments. It is the role of all of us in this place to listen, consult, develop and deliver solutions to meet these challenges.

At home in my electorate of North Sydney we are being squeezed by major infrastructure projects, like the planned Western Harbour Tunnel and the Warringah Freeway upgrade, which have failed to provide a balanced response to these challenges. In many cases, solutions are presented without regard to the social and community impacts of the project.

I welcome this bill as one step in equipping us to meet these challenges. The bill confirms that Infrastructure Australia's focus will continue to be on transport, water, energy and communications infrastructure—nationally significant infrastructure that connects our cities and regions and is an enabler of our economy. However, I am disappointed that the government has not taken this opportunity to truly reform and improve Infrastructure Australia in more substantial ways. It is a missed opportunity.

The review found that the definition of 'nationally significant infrastructure' was ineffective and conceded that Infrastructure Australia had been sidelined by successive governments and its influence had waned. We have seen this with other organisations across the government environment, most notably and most recently the Climate Change Authority.

The bill before us implements some of the recommendations from the independent review released in December 2022 to address the criticisms. Disappointingly, the government has only supported seven of the 16 recommendations made by that review, and this bill legislates some of those recommendations. It will redefine Infrastructure Australia's principal purpose by inserting a new object, making Infrastructure Australia an independent adviser on nationally significant infrastructure investment planning and project prioritisation. The bill will also redefine Infrastructure Australia's functions by allowing audits and assessments to be conducted as well as changing the way projects are prioritised. It will also establish a new governance structure, replacing the Infrastructure Australia board.

I will be moving two amendments to the bill, one relating to transparency around Infrastructure Australia's advice, and one relating to the inclusion of community, like my community in North Sydney, in Infrastructure Australia's consultation and remit.

Firstly, let's talk about improving transparency. Infrastructure Australia will retain its statutory independence and will continue to provide impartial advice to the Australian government, particularly on infrastructure project selection and on prioritisation. Recommendation 4 of the 2020 review calls for two new annual statements generated by Infrastructure Australia to be tabled in parliament 'in the interests of transparency and accountability'.

It beggars belief that the government has not accepted this recommendation, and this bill further entrenches a lack of transparency over Infrastructure Australia's advice. The government's response to this recommendation has been to hide behind the shield of cabinet deliberations, but I find this argument uncompelling. All members of this place, the media and the voters should be able to receive the two annual statements that will report on the performance outcomes being achieved from the investment of taxpayer funds.

I call on the minister to reconsider the refusal to improve transparency and accountability when it comes to the infrastructure portfolio. There is nothing to lose in allowing others to see what informed conversations are taking place and what advice the government is heeding or choosing to move away from. It will still remain the cabinet's decision which direction the cabinet goes.

My second set of amendments elevates the role of community with Infrastructure Australia's work. This bill does nothing to rectify their heavily weighted focus on economic productivity gains of infrastructure and does not fully account for the social and community needs. Given this, I will be moving an amendment to increase the role of community, like mine of North Sydney, and the development and decision-making around infrastructure projects. The amendments will strengthen the community benefit considerations that are assessed when Infrastructure Australia looks at the value of infrastructure projects, auditing existing infrastructure and compiling lists of infrastructure priorities and developing infrastructure plans. The amendments will also require Infrastructure Australia to consult with the community when developing corporate plans and consider the future needs of users when providing advice to the minister; the Commonwealth, state, territory and local governments; investors in infrastructure and owners of infrastructure.

In my discussions with the government about this amendment, I was asked why community deserves to be included in the bill, and for this reason I will explain here and now. My committee of North Sydney, as I said, is under immense pressure from major and minor infrastructure projects, and the communities are the ones who bear the brunt of the pressure. Ultimately, it's the community that is squeezed from all directions. There are three major infrastructure projects for which we are not seeing effective, modern, resilient planning responses. They are the upgrade of the Warringah Freeway, the Western Harbour Tunnel and the planning around the Beaches Link. There are a multitude of smaller infrastructure projects like sport and recreation facilities and bike ramps that lead to a cavernous amount of tree loss.

We must not just take these projects individually but rather look at them in their entirety and understand their cumulative impacts. Who better to assist with that understanding than those whose daily lives they impact—the community. The route they walk their dog on every morning, the noise they hear from their houses as work is undertaken, the pollution their kids breathe while they are playing in the playground—these are all changed by the projects that these people are asked to live with.

From the outset, the major transport projects have been yet another example of short-term thinking and using infrastructure approaches from the 1960s to plan for the problems we are facing not only today but tomorrow and in future years. Frustratingly, the North Sydney environment will pay the price, with more traffic congestion on our streets, more air pollution around our schools, the loss of more than 3½ thousand trees, mangroves and seagrasses; and the loss of 15,000 square metres of green space from our parks and reserves, including spaces like Cammeray Park and Flat Rock Gully. As one constituent said to me:

The pictures of the mother duck and her ducklings standing behind the workers who did nothing to help them when there dam was removed, then seeing the pictures of the dead ducklings over the next few days, the Powerful Owl killed by a bus, minor birds (although not the native ones) building nests in traffic lights are some of the horror stories that the cause and effect by the government removing a once beautiful park.

Residents are frustrated by the seemingly endless clearing of mature trees, which regularly seems to happen ahead of schedule, and yet the replanting and replacement of trees never seems to be delivered quite so smoothly.

Ultimately, the North Sydney community feels largely ignored in a rushed consultation process, and our residents are going to lose out. This is typified by the fact that community speaks about community consultation not being well advertised. It's hard to find information and it's difficult to decipher processes to provide feedback. Increasingly, correspondence to my office refers to 'consultation' in air quotes to signify the lack thereof. People across North Sydney in fact routinely referred to community consultation as being DEAD, where D stands for decide, E stands for educate, A stands for advocate, and D stands for do. At no point in that process is there a letter L for listen or a C for consult.

By the time the community reads about the details of the project, the design is set in stone. There has been no shifting of state departments once they have set their minds on something, even when the committee present expertly researched alternative options. In my view, plans should be infinitely adaptable when political and community will align. Another constituent wrote to me, saying:

I feel powerless. It seems all the pleas from locals and residents have been ignored and the NSW government is continuing to destroy native habitat, cut down trees, and destroy the local environment.

As it stands, the legislation recognises the role and importance of giving consumers a voice in the process when it comes to ideating infrastructure projects, but the reality is that not all consumers will always be of the community most impacted. Consumers use the roads, consumers use the bridges, consumers use the sporting facilities, but it is communities who live with the consequences of them, and they deserve to be heard. It is therefore for good reason that I believe this legislation will be strengthened by specifically acknowledging and recognising the important role community consultation plays in delivering best-in-class infrastructure projects. It is time we started approaching major infrastructure projects like these differently—with transparency, true community consultation, sustainability and integrity at the heart of them. I look forward to presenting my amendments during the consideration in detail debate.

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