Danna Vale (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008 is of particular interest to the people of my electorate of Hughes because of two key infrastructure proposals which are of concern to my residents—namely, the long-overdue F6 corridor through Sutherland and the more recent suggestion of a large intermodal freight hub at Moorebank. Hence I am pleased to be able to speak on this bill.

The bill’s purpose is to establish an entity, Infrastructure Australia, to advise all levels of government, investors and infrastructure owners on matters relating to the provision of infrastructure across Australia. This advisory body will undertake a national infrastructure audit and develop a set of guidelines to replace those currently used by the governments of each state and the Commonwealth. To make this legislation as effective as possible on a national level, I respectfully contend that the federal government should give favourable consideration to the amendments which will be proposed by the coalition. These amendments will ensure that the new infrastructure authority created by this bill will not simply be another useless entity to excuse state Labor’s failure to act on infrastructure planning and development. It is feared by many that this proposed advisory authority could take years to develop a list of priorities and could take further years to make any contribution to improving national infrastructure.

The coalition will move three technical amendments which will address the lifting of restrictions upon Infrastructure Australia to allow it to undertake reviews, of its own volition; to make the minister’s power to give new functions subject to parliamentary scrutiny; and to ensure that the minister seeks advice from Infrastructure Australia before appointing the Infrastructure Coordinator, to reduce the temptation to appoint a special mate to this important post.

With great optimism, I therefore wish to bring a number of local issues to the attention of the House to support the argument that the proposed authority needs to be a body that will not simply continue Labor’s appalling record of neglect and indifference at state and territory level on the planning and construction of major roads and rail. These continue to create bottlenecks in and around our capital cities. For instance, past infrastructure debacles instigated by the New South Wales state Labor government include the Cross City Tunnel, the Lane Cove Tunnel and the Kurnell desalination plant, to name a few in our Sydney region.

At a local level the most important infrastructure proposal that concerns those of my constituents in the Sutherland shire area of my electorate is the long delayed extension of the F6 corridor from Loftus to Captain Cook Bridge and Taren Point. Around 2,500 motor vehicles and freight vehicles travel daily through the Sutherland shire from the Wollongong and Illawarra region to Sydney and return again. The traffic congestion on the Princes Highway and the other important arterial roads in the shire is monumental and the greatest cause of frustration to all road users. The stopping and starting at the many traffic lights in the long lanes of traffic on the highway adds to the greenhouse gas emissions but, more importantly, it is an issue of road safety for local residents. In Heathcote alone there have been four deaths on the Princes Highway in the past three years due to intense traffic use, one being a small boy on his bike at the lights at Heathcote.

The corridor extension of the F6 has been planned since the early 1950s. Indeed, when my husband and I purchased our home near President Avenue in Gymea, one of the major arterial roads of the shire, we were advised that the F6—just a few blocks away—would be built in the next 10 years. That was in 1965 and I and the rest of Sutherland shire are still waiting for this vital modern improvement to the 1950s road system that currently exists in the area. The extension of the F6 through the Sutherland shire is now critical. My constituents are sick of wasting precious time sitting in the traffic for hours on end each and every day of the week. We need a properly planned F6 corridor to provide the modern roadway that people in modern Australia have come to expect. Better road infrastructure means less time on our roads for local families but also less pollution. This roadway is decades overdue.

Without the F6 corridor, the future is grim for shire residents travelling to the city. The future will bring more of the same, but increasingly worse. With the expansion of the port facility at Port Kembla and the exponential growth in the Illawarra region, it is expected that several hundred trucks alone will be added to the roadways of my electorate in the next few years. That means around 200,000 trucks per year increasing wear and tear on our 1950s roadways, making them even more dangerous. The F6 corridor would create a safe, direct route for all motorists. It would mean fewer large trucks on our local roadways and safer conditions for pedestrians and families in my electorate.

At the last election the coalition government committed $20 million for the New South Wales state government to undertake planning and preliminary works for the proposed F6 corridor. In the interests and safety of all road users of the Princes Highway from Wollongong through Sutherland shire to the city, it is vital that the current government confirm and follow through on this commitment that was ardently supported by me and the member for Cook, Mr Scott Morrison, on behalf of the people of our electorates during the 2007 election campaign. This promise of $20 million represented great hope for the many road users who use the roadway, not only the people of Wollongong but especially the residents of our electorates. After nearly 60 years on the planning table this vital infrastructure is well and truly overdue.

The new advisory authority Infrastructure Australia could not be more welcome if it delivers on its promise. The $20 million announcement by the previous coalition government was part of the 2020 plan for Australia’s transport future—an integrated vision tackling local roads and national highways, much needed by local residents as well as interstate, long-haul freight vehicles. The need for the F6 corridor is also a key priority identified in a survey conducted by the NRMA, which reflected the widespread community concern about the urgent need for this road link. Yet the New South Wales state Labor government continue to regard the needs of motorists and residents in this area with indifference and have effectively shelved the F6 corridor for some unidentified time in the distant future. The $20 million commitment was to be funded through the AusLink National Network program and was based on a 50 per cent share of the funding required, with the remainder to be paid by the New South Wales government. It is with some hope that this legislation will mean that the need for this road corridor will again be brought before the state government as a vital piece of infrastructure and they will no longer be able to sit on their hands.

While I am fully aware of the strong support in the community for the extension of the F6 corridor, I am determined to ensure that there is extensive community consultation in relation to its environmental impact; that the latest roads construction methods are used to maximise the retention of open space; that the road allows for future traffic growth; and that all contract details are transparent so there can be no secret deals to close local streets, which forces motorists onto a toll road with no viable free alternative, as in the cross-city tunnel fiasco. Improved transport options should be integrated into any proposal and any other legitimate concerns of the majority of residents should be properly and justly addressed. The New South Wales state Labor government has ignored the F6 corridor for far too long and the time for some real action is now overdue.

Whilst speaking of public consultation and transparency relating to large infrastructure projects in my electorate I would like to refer to the recent suggestion to place a large intermodal freight hub in my electorate at Moorebank near Liverpool. It is critical that my constituents are consulted and given every opportunity to have their concerns made known to the state planning authority on this proposed container terminal at Moorebank. While freight demand is forecast to almost double by 2020, it is essential that projects of such scale are carried out in an open and transparent way. My constituents have so far been kept in the dark about this proposal. There is uncertainty surrounding the proposal, which is said to be established on the present site of the defence school of military engineering utilising the M5 from Port Botany and other major roadways and upgrading and specially designating a freight rail track at Liverpool to distribute freight across the state. While this proposal for a significant infrastructure project is in its very preliminary viability planning stages, the New South Wales state government must be aware that such infrastructure, although vital for the economic life of our state and our nation, must take into account the needs and concerns of local residents at Moorebank and Wattle Grove. They must be taken into consideration and, if necessary, must be addressed in a generous way.

I assure all of my constituents and families in this area that, should this project proceed at Moorebank, I will ensure that their needs and concerns regarding the traffic, noise, pollution, environmental issues and any negative impact on the local neighbourhood amenity will be listened to and addressed by the government. As one Wattle Grove resident recently wrote to me: ‘Proposals to situate container terminals at the Defence sites at Moorebank have exposed unsavoury aspects of the state government’s freight policies. Firstly, the closure of commercial container vehicles from Sydney Harbour turned the greatest deepwater port in the world into a developer’s water feature. Secondly, the shift to expand Port Botany was against independent environmental advice. Thirdly, because the port at Botany is too small to handle and store the freight, terminals have to be built all over the city—but the biggest proposal so far is for Moorebank. The East Hills rail line happens to have a lead-off spur right into one of the proposed sites. The line is identified as a shared passenger/freight line. St George residents should take note or end up with the possibility of thousands of containers on 24-hour 600-metre-long trains keeping them awake all night. Also the port expansion will see even more on the roads. What an awful mess we are in. Residents should complain to their local MP.’ And complain they certainly have.

While we need to continue to reform and invest in the transport sector, it needs to be done in an open and transparent manner. That is why I am committed to fighting for the rights and concerns of my constituents. They have a right to know what is going on in their own backyard and I am determined to ensure that the federal and state Labor governments do not allow mistakes made on other infrastructure projects in the Sydney region—like the Lane Cove Tunnel—to reoccur and create any negative impact on the lives of my constituents and the peaceful enjoyment of their own homes.

I am also committed to securing a long-term transport solution for my constituents suffering in the Wattle Grove area. I have previously called on the New South Wales state government to build a new railway station at Wattle Grove as a matter of urgency to ease congestion on the Heathcote Road and to reduce the intense parking pressure at nearby Holsworthy railway station. Local residents have been crying out for a solution to the gridlock on our local roads in the Holsworthy area during morning peak hours for some time. This situation is set to get worse as more housing developments are opening up in the area of west Wattle Grove and the Georges Fair at Moorebank. Heathcote Road is choked with traffic in the morning, and there is also a chronic shortage of parking at Holsworthy railway station. Residents continue to express their frustration to me at the state government’s indifference to their concerns—it has no solution to the growing traffic problem. The population is fast growing in this region of Sydney. Local families must be assured that they can access local rail transport to get to work in a safe manner. The only answer is to have a new railway station on the East Hills line. Wattle Grove is the ideal position between Holsworthy railway station and Glenfield. I am determined to fight on behalf of local residents to see this solution delivered.

In conclusion, this bill sets up an advisory authority to do an audit of infrastructure requirements across the nation and develop a set of guidelines to which all governments can refer as their priority register of the infrastructure needs of many communities within each state. It is the hope of all of us here in this place that the federal and state governments will act on those priorities when they are identified, and it is with great optimism that I refer this new authority to the infrastructure projects in my electorate. Therefore, I warmly commend this legislation to the House.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This legislation that we are discussing today, the Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008, is going to develop a planned approach to infrastructure. It is an act to establish Infrastructure Australia and to appoint its coordinator. It is about a national coordinated approach to reform infrastructure investment, which is critical to Australia’s future economic performance and raising national productivity.

Sitting here in the Main Committee, I have heard speaker after speaker from the other side talking about state governments, with the previous speaker talking about a railway station in her electorate. That is not what this legislation is about. This is about a national approach to infrastructure investment. This is about planning. This is about the future. It is not about a railway station in any particular member’s electorate. It is not about blaming the state government for every problem that exists within our electorate. This is about moving on from the blame game. This is about the federal government taking responsibility through a national approach to infrastructure. To have the right sort of infrastructure in place in this country that is so vast is one of the most important issues that any government could possibly have before it.

In the last parliament I was a member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Transport and Regional Services, which brought down a report, The great freight task, looking at all the issues around infrastructure gaps and bottlenecks in relation to ports. The overwhelming issue that was apparent to me was the need to adopt a national approach. There were some very significant recommendations made in that report, which I am sure will be looked at by Infrastructure Australia. It is very pleasing to see that Sir Rod Eddington will be the inaugural chair of Infrastructure Australia. He is a person who has had a long history of looking at infrastructure. Part of his initial work will be developing long-term solutions to infrastructure gaps and bottlenecks, and looking at the decade of underinvestment in the national transport, water, energy and community assets of our country—assets that are vitally important if Australia is to be a competitive nation.

This legislation will put Australia in a position where we are accepting the responsibility and challenges of the future by ensuring competitive and efficient national infrastructure markets, setting clear investment priorities and putting in place an appropriate regulatory environment. It was a key election promise of the Rudd government and one of the initiatives and commitments that were put to the Australian people that led to the Rudd government being elected.

Infrastructure Australia will be charged with the development of a strategic blueprint for our nation’s infrastructure needs and, in doing that, I am sure they will be looking at this report. It is also going to adopt a cooperative process for the Commonwealth, states and industry. There is going to be a partnership. Everybody is going to work together. It is about stopping the blame game. It is about stopping one-off commitments to marginal seats or National Party electorates; rather, it is about ensuring that in Australia we have got a planned approach, we identify the needs and we make sure that we deliver on those important issues for the future.

On this side of the parliament, we are about nation building. We are about the future. We are about taking Australia forward so it can be an important player internationally rather than just reacting to issues on a one-off basis. Infrastructure is important if we are to have ongoing economic prosperity. It was the previous government’s neglect of infrastructure over the long, long 11 years that they were in government that has been one of the contributing factors to the economic position we find ourselves in today. The Rudd government will be dealing with that neglect. We will be adopting a national, coordinated approach to tackling those infrastructure bottlenecks that were highlighted in The great freight task, the report that was brought down in the last parliament.

Infrastructure Australia will drive investment where it is needed, not just in the electorates of marginal seat holders; rather, it is about planning. It is about good government. It is about a new era in government, something that did not happen in the last parliament. It is about developing a strategic blueprint for our infrastructure needs and it is about driving reform. It is not about whether some member needs to be placated in order to make sure that they will support a government initiative—which was the case with the last government—or whether the infrastructure is located in a particular National Party or marginal seat.

The Howard government had 11 long years to fix the infrastructure bottlenecks in Australia. It did not respond to this report that I have in my hand, The great freight task. It failed the Australian people in that. When I stand in this House and I hear speaker after speaker blaming the state governments, it says to me that, even after losing the election, they do not get it. They just do not get it. They do not understand that the future of Australia is in our hands and that we need to develop a planned approach. We need Infrastructure Australia to be in place. We need to embrace the tasks that are urgent. It is time to stop wasting time and it is time to stop blaming the states for every problem that exists. It is time to make sure that we have the infrastructure in place, that there is national coordination of infrastructure that will boost our economic efficiency, productivity and Australia’s international competitiveness.

This has always been the Labor way. It started with Ben Chifley with the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme. Gough Whitlam gave us practical infrastructure solutions such as sewerage and hospitals. So did Tom Uren, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. History will judge Labor as the party that always invested in infrastructure, and developed a planned approach to making sure that Australia as a nation has the right infrastructure to move forward into the future, and it will condemn the opposition as the party of the quick fix, the party that blamed the states and the party that failed to take leadership.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the concerns I have in relation to the proposed bill, Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008. This new body, Infrastructure Australia, was promised by Labor during the election campaign in order to improve the national infrastructure planning process and advise government and private stakeholders on infrastructure issues. However, the Labor government has given a very strong and often repeated commitment to the people of Australia to deliver on all of its election promises. As we are all aware, there were significant infrastructure projects committed to during the campaign. Will these same infrastructure commitments be funded and commencement dates announced prior to or during the 12-month review period of the Infrastructure Australia process? Of the funding available, given that the government’s election commitments are a priority, in what time frame can the projects identified by Infrastructure Australia actually be delivered? How will the government respond if Infrastructure Australia’s priority list does not match Labor’s infrastructure election commitments? Will the minister table the list of projects in the order identified by Infrastructure Australia? I will be particularly interested in the recommendations regarding state levies, taxes and charges and the indirect infrastructure costs on transport and housing.

Equally, under the provisions of the bill, the regulatory reforms recommendations will be a key part of the delivery capacity. I will be very focused on the outcomes of the recommendations of Infrastructure Australia given its role of identifying nationally significant infrastructure priorities, particularly given the importance of regional projects and what this actually equates to on the ground in regional areas. Regional Australia cannot afford to be marginalised by this process, particularly given the wealth generated in these areas. Good infrastructure for road, rail, shipping, telecommunications and other infrastructure is essential to exports, imports, industry and commerce, and critical for our day-to-day activities.

My electorate of Forrest in the south-west region of Western Australia is diverse, dynamic and covers an area of 23,900 square kilometres. Approximately a quarter of Western Australians who live outside the metropolitan area live in the south-west. The region boasts a population of over 145,000 people and has a growth rate well over twice that of the national average. The region’s population is predicted to grow to over 157,000 by 2011. There is always a continued requirement for road investment and maintenance. Roads are vital infrastructure projects for our regional development and urgently needed to cater for the increase in population growth currently being experienced. Spending on infrastructure projects such as roads affects the livestock, wellbeing and road safety of those who live and work in the south-west. Well-targeted and responsible expenditure will reap significant economic, environmental and social dividends in the future.

The coalition’s well-funded AusLink national transport program, which the Rudd government said it would embrace, has not as yet been embraced. We still await confirmation of that pledge in the May budget. However, I too have noticed that the more money the Australian government has put into infrastructure development, the less the states have chosen to provide, in spite of what is said. They have pulled back on expenditure when in fact they should have been encouraged by the Commonwealth investment to provide even more funding, particularly in booming states like Western Australia and Queensland.

Many state governments have sought to avoid their share when a project has had shared responsibility. They have cut back also on their support for local government, which has meant that local roads have not had the full benefit of the Roads to Recovery program because, in the end, local government has had to raise additional funds to cover the state Labor governments withdrawing financial assistance to them in this area. It is disappointing that the states have, almost without exception, responded to the generosity of the federal government over the last decade or more by cutting back their own contributions. So the real benefit of some of this federal investment has not been realised at the local level. Responsibility for the funding and physical provision of infrastructure lies overwhelmingly with the states, not with the Commonwealth as is widely believed.

I have strongly promoted the need for federal funding for road infrastructure projects in my electorate of Forrest. The Labor Party announced a promise to fund $136 million for the Bunbury Outer Ring Road and the Bunbury Port access projects—critical regional infrastructure projects and crucial to the issue of public safety. Four major highways converge at the Eelup roundabout in Bunbury, creating the worst black spot within the entire state and only adding to the urgency for funds to flow for these road projects. I have already spoken in this chamber about the need for the federal Labor government to deliver on this funding promise to my electorate of Forrest, and I am most concerned that so far none of this funding promise has been delivered.

Just recently, the RAC made a media release entitled ‘WA’s killer highways revealed’, which called ‘on the state government to give Western Australia’s road infrastructure a major cash injection after it was revealed there are nearly 1,000 kilometres of substandard highways in WA’. The majority of the state’s 10 worst sections of highways were in the south-west, in my electorate. It went on to say:

The worst rated section of road was a 73km stretch of the South West Highway between Yornup, south of Bridgetown, to Shannon, south of Manjimup.

Following this media release, many constituents rang my office to advise me of other south-west roads that were in dire need of upgrading. They were all in the vicinity of the major traffic tourist routes of Caves Road from Yallingup to Margaret River and Harmans Mill Road in Metricup, as well as stretches of Bussell Highway and Waverley Road near Cowaramup. Also, Skippy Rock Road, Greenhill Road and Cosy Corner Road in Augusta need urgent remedial work—a further example of the WA state government’s failure to deliver on regional road infrastructure. These problems have also transpired in rail, as evidenced by the intermodal rail transfer at North Greenbushes, which has not been delivered.

This government has committed $20 billion over four years to the establishment and work program of Infrastructure Australia. I hope this is not a new bureaucratic layer which slows down investment approvals and embroils government jurisdictions in the business of selecting and prioritising projects. A robust national infrastructure planning arrangement is already in place through AusLink. It includes federal-state coordinated planning frameworks covering road and rail. AusLink 1 and 2 included $38 billion of infrastructure commitments over 10 years to 2013-14. The Council of Australian Governments agreed in June 2005 that each state and territory prepare an infrastructure assessment every five years. The first of these are complete. These reviews have been undertaken by state governments—are they therefore inadequate?

Infrastructure Australia should not become another talkfest offering more studies, bureaucracy and reviews, and far less bitumen, concrete and steel—what is really needed in the south-west of Western Australia. Infrastructure Australia is not able to undertake investigations on its own initiative. As Labor has said, all its election promises will be implemented. Infrastructure Australia will be unable to independently consider ALP infrastructure election promises. The Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government may also give direction to the Infrastructure Coordinator without taking advice from Infrastructure Australia. Infrastructure Australia may have the potential to deliver benefits, particularly with respect to more harmonised regulation such as developing nationally consistent guidelines and principles for the assessment of public-private partnerships and standardised documents for tendering processes. The idea seems to be to develop one set of guidelines to replace those that each state and the Commonwealth have developed. More generally, and given that a goal of the Rudd government is to reduce business regulation, one would expect to see advice from Infrastructure Australia as to how regulation, as it affects infrastructure, might be reduced or rationalised.

What is unclear is what relationship there will be between Infrastructure Australia and the regulatory bodies, such as the Australian Energy Regulator, the Australian Energy Market Commission and state bodies such as the Essential Services Commission of South Australia. Also unclear is what type of relationship there will be between Infrastructure Australia and other Commonwealth government agencies such as Treasury, which play a role in developing policy that affects infrastructure. It seems that there is a potential for duplication and overlap.

Other questions arise as to how Infrastructure Australia will perform its functions. The purpose of the audit of infrastructure projects is to determine the adequacy of infrastructure, taking account of forecast growth. As the National Commission of Audit pointed out, a proper assessment of the adequacy and condition of existing infrastructure can only be made on a case-by-case basis. As it is, state government agencies, government trading enterprises and private sector companies are involved in identifying infrastructure needs and in assessing projects. Presumably, Infrastructure Australia will not conduct its own audit—its resources seem to be small for that—and it will have to draw on those bodies’ assessments of adequacy and projected demand. A risk with such an approach would be that the states have an incentive to overstate their investment needs.

One of Infrastructure Australia’s functions is to establish infrastructure priority lists to create a pipeline of projects. Presumably, Infrastructure Australia will develop criteria with which to rank projects, and this raises the question of what criteria Infrastructure Australia will actually employ. In particular, will the criteria include cost-benefit analyses—that is, analyses of the benefits and costs to society of undertaking investment projects, particularly in the regions, which is a widely used device to rank projects? Further, will Infrastructure Australia insist that all projects be subject to cost-benefit analyses?

Even if Infrastructure Australia decides that a project has high priority, there is no guarantee that it will proceed. Whether a project proceeds may depend on the outcome of deliberations of regulatory bodies as to rates of return and prices. Therefore, undertaking projects on the basis of priority could result in some states and areas losing out to others, something that is particularly important to me in regional Australia. States whose populations are growing rapidly and whose infrastructure needs are also growing rapidly would presumably be the prime beneficiaries. This could also lead to tensions between the states.

In conclusion, I support the motion that the opposition will move for technical amendments to this bill to lift restrictions upon Infrastructure Australia to undertake reviews of its own volition; to make the minister’s power to give new functions to Infrastructure Australia subject to parliamentary disallowance; and to ensure that the minister seeks advice from Infrastructure Australia before appointing the Infrastructure Coordinator. I commend to the chamber the amendments to this bill which the opposition will move.

Greg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Procurement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am proud to speak on the next instalment of Labor’s nation-building agenda: the establishment of Infrastructure Australia. Labor is the party of nation building. From the establishment of the Commonwealth Bank and the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme to the urban development of the western suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne, Labor governments have built this country, and this tradition will continue with the Rudd Labor government. In this vein, Labor committed to establishing Infrastructure Australia within 100 days of forming government, and I am proud to see this promise honoured.

Infrastructure Australia will take a nationally coordinated approach to tackling infrastructure bottlenecks and will drive investment into fuelling the nation’s productive capacity. There is a critical need for this after 11 years of economic neglect by the former Howard government. The 11 years of neglect is inexcusable given that, since the December quarter of 1998, we have seen the terms of trade improve in Australia by nearly 60 per cent. The resources boom has kept export prices high at the same time as the prices of goods and services we import have remained relatively stable. This has provided a surge in government revenue to the point where the budget surplus over the next four years is projected under the MYEFO for 2007-08 to be $62 billion.

We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to save and invest wisely, to conduct our fiscal strategy conservatively and carefully, to sustain the nation’s prosperity and improve the productive capacity of the Australian economy. Instead, under the former government, we saw essentially lazy economic policy. Instead of investing in the productive capacity of the nation, relieving the bottlenecks in the expansion of our exports and resourcing the education and skills system, the previous federal government delivered regional rorts and poorly targeted tax cuts. The result is a surge of inflationary pressure that is the greatest danger to the Australian economy.

We are now facing a great challenge, with the highest underlying inflation rate in 16 years. The most vulnerable in society are the ones that will mostly bear the brunt of this inflation damage because they have the least capacity to improve their income to cope with rising prices. Unless we can address the underlying drivers of inflation we will face even more serious constraints on future growth and competitiveness at tremendous cost to Australian living standards. That is why fighting inflation is a key economic priority for the Rudd Labor government.

The fact is that demand has been rising faster than supply. There are two essential ways to rectify this. One is to increase inputs, capital and labour so that output will approximate demand. The second is to seek to increase productivity. On that point, productivity growth stalled to around nil in the December quarter of 2007. We must improve that performance. On the former issue, trying to ensure that the capacity constraints are overcome or tackled, this government is committed to increasing the supply of capital and labour. For example, the government has announced an extra 5,000 places for permanent skilled migrants, and this, of course, will increase the supply in the labour market.

The equally important method of combating inflation, as I said, is to lift our productivity growth rate. Unfortunately, the previous government failed on this challenge. According to the OECD Economic Outlook, Australia’s labour productivity growth this decade is almost 40 per cent below the average productivity growth for all OECD countries. In the previous decade, from 1991 to 1999, Australia’s productivity growth was almost 50 per cent above the OECD average. As I said before, the latest ABS data shows productivity growth fell to zero in the year to December 2007. A major reason for that worrying slump is that over the last 11 years the government not only underinvested in education and skill development; it also did not lead the issue of investment in infrastructure.

Developing additional economic, social and innovation infrastructure is essential to improve the performance of the economy and our quality of life. It will relieve capacity constraints, increase productivity and put downward pressure on inflation. We are seeing the impact of infrastructure bottlenecks, whether it is clogged ports preventing resource exports or congested roads preventing efficient transportation of goods and services. The arteries of the national economy are clogged and we are taking the strain. Conversely, infrastructure development can play a pivotal role in the economic growth of a nation. However, we should not underestimate the quantum of the infrastructure challenge that the country faces.

Infrastructure Australia, established under the Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008, will be required to audit the adequacy of the nation’s infrastructure, which is a vital task. Australia is ranked 20th out of 25 OECD countries for its spending on public infrastructure as a proportion of GDP—a performance that needs to be improved. According to the Business Council of Australia, the total infrastructure deficit is more than $100 billion and, if we fixed the current bottlenecks, we could boost our economy by $20 billion per year.

According to another study, which was undertaken by the Australian Council of Infrastructure Development and Econtech, just to clear the backlog of underinvestment in electricity, gas, road, rail and water would require just under $25 billion worth of investment. Econtech further argues that clearing that backlog would result in a long-term increase in GDP of nearly one per cent and nearly a two per cent increase in exports, which of course would play a vital role in attacking the trade deficit the country is experiencing.

Infrastructure Australia will develop an infrastructure priority list based on the audit to be considered by COAG. This is essential if we are to set about fixing this problem. The second part of the commitment is also important to note. The priority list will be considered by COAG. It would be wonderful if we had greater federal-state cooperation in this important area of economic activity. With a break from past approaches, Infrastructure Australia will also involve the private sector, which is critical. It is critical if we are to improve the productive capacity of the country. Governments cannot take decisions in isolation and, in a period of declining direct investment in infrastructure and a very tight labour market, it is vital that we develop a cooperative approach with the private sector. This does not mean using government infrastructure grants to advance a narrow ideological agenda, as the previous government did by making its AusLink funding contingent on its companies using Work Choices legislation.

Related to the public-private sector cooperation I am referring to is Infrastructure Australia’s task of looking at the financing of infrastructure and how best to attract private capital while guaranteeing maximum value for money for taxpayers. As a former board member of the second-largest superannuation fund in Australia, with $30 billion under management, I can tell you that investors have a great interest in infrastructure projects where this can be shown to produce reasonable and stable returns to fund members. However, at the moment trustees of super funds have insufficient opportunities for such investment and this has necessitated greater investment than many funds would like in Australian and overseas equities. There is a great need for a national leadership to identify project-funding models, including the efficient use of public-private partnerships with federal-state coordination. It is to be expected that Infrastructure Australia will fill this role—and it is sorely needed.

I am pleased that Infrastructure Australia will develop nationally consistent guidelines for public-private partnerships. These will ensure that maximum value for money is achieved and that there is greater transparency and greater public accountability. It is fair to say that, in the past, some PPPs have enabled excessive fees to be included in the project structures, and there is a clear need for better guidelines and the development of further competition in the private sector to strip away unwarranted fees being generated from such projects. Part of the guidelines will be the development of a strong public sector comparator that can be applied to all potential PPP projects. This will help guarantee that value for money is maximised. The public sector comparator details the most efficient public sector delivery option that can be achieved for the relevant project and will be used as a benchmark against PPP options. All these projects involve the expenditure of taxpayer’s money, and our first duty is to ensure that none of it is wasted. The public sector comparator will be an important part of this effort.

Another vital role of Infrastructure Australia will be to provide advice on infrastructure policy issues arising from climate change. We have moved from a government that did not even believe in climate change to a government that recognises that almost every policy area will have to include serious consideration of the impact of climate change. Reducing congestion and improving the efficiency of transport networks will play an important part in the abatement of greenhouse gases and improve urban amenity.

The question for this place is whether Australia is to take the high road to securing Australia’s economic future or the low road. The previous government chose the low road believing that the only way to compete was by driving down wages through Work Choices and by underinvesting in skills and education. By contrast, the current government is committed to the high road. We are committed to the education revolution, to rebuilding the skills base, to innovation policy and to fighting inflation, so in the future our children will compete with the rest of the world on the basis of their skills, ideas and inventiveness—and that is an important goal to achieve.

Establishing a cohesive, coordinated approach to infrastructure investment is vital in this strategy. In cooperation with the state governments, the Rudd Labor government will ensure that there are competitive and efficient national infrastructure markets. It will set clear investment priorities and put in place appropriate regulatory environments. Infrastructure Australia will ensure that infrastructure investment will add to the economy’s productive capacity, and that is an important goal to achieve.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Ageing and the Voluntary Sector) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008 will see the creation of Infrastructure Australia, an advisory body created with the specific purpose of considering Australia’s infrastructure requirements. I rise to support this bill; however, I wish to put on the record my support for the technical amendments made by my colleague the member for Wide Bay. These amendments will ensure that the Infrastructure Australia body works more efficiently. Strong infrastructure is a key component of future growth in regional Australia and in my electorate of Parkes, in western New South Wales.

Infrastructure is possibly the link that binds together all the issues in my electorate. Possibly the most pressing infrastructure requirement in my electorate is roads. The previous government went a long way to addressing these problems with the Roads to Recovery program and the creation of AusLink, but there is still a large roads problem in my electorate. It is important to remember that nearly every item that finds its way onto a supermarket shelf in every town or city in Australia starts its journey on a local road. In my electorate people run multimillion-dollar businesses and as little as 10 millilitres of rain can mean that they cannot get their produce to market.

In the past, we have used vehicle movements to assess the funding for roads. Maybe there has been a political imperative to link communities together but, with local roads, quite often the value of the production of an area is not taken into account. In respect of agriculture, we are moving from large bulk products that have a long shelf life into horticulture and intensive agriculture. This makes it more imperative to get to market on time. In order to grow production and to move into these more intensive industries we need not only more efficient use of resources such as water but also a more reliable road network.

Quite often the most productive land has the worst base for road building, so we have the double problem of high production and a lack of suitable road base. This can be expensive, and it is a difficult situation to overcome. These roads also restrict people from finding suitable employees to operate in these areas. Understandably, it is a great disincentive to move to a place where you cannot get your children to school on a regular basis or you cannot access emergency health services when you require them. I would like to propose that as a parliament we look at the productivity of an area when we are assessing our funding needs, particularly in relation to local roads.

The other issue is rail. Rail is very much at the moment in the minds of people in my electorate and in regional Australia. The potential for a very large wheat crop is looming this year. We have had excellent rains right across north-west New South Wales and across the black soil country that my electorate is renowned for. It will take very few rainfall events to ensure a big crop. The proposed removal of services by Pacific National in the grain freight market is a worrying issue for the grain farmers in my area. If you add that to the issue of deregulation of the wheat market, which has been proposed by the new government, the uncertainty amongst wheat growers in my electorate is most intense.

The other issue is inland rail. I was quite distressed to hear the announcement just after the election that $65 million was being pulled from the scoping study on inland rail and that it is going to be delayed for a couple of years. Inland rail is a multifaceted piece of infrastructure. Its primary purpose would be to move freight in a 22- to 23-hour time frame from Melbourne to Brisbane and vice versa. In the areas that it would dissect—and it would go right through the middle of my electorate—the potential to grow industry would be enhanced quite a lot. Inland Australia has been looking for a major infrastructure project such as this not only for quick access to ports with produce but also as a major key in community building. My electorate covers some of the most progressive and productive towns in rural Australia, including towns such as Dubbo, Gunnedah, Narrabri, Moree and Mudgee. Those towns would all benefit from having a high-speed rail line going through the area. It would put my electorate at the crossroads of transport in regional Australia. As the country comes to grips with the effects of climate change, rail could play a major part. It is important to understand that one double-stack container train would take 176 B-double semitrailers off the roads and would save something like 4,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas per trip. We need to seriously take into account the effect that that would have.

Spending on water infrastructure is also important. The previous government’s National Water Initiative allocated $10 billion to water and 60 per cent of that was to be spent on improving infrastructure. I would urge the government to seriously look at that. Water is one of our great natural resources and we need to value every drop. I spoke about the potential for high-value horticultural crops and manufacturing. That goes hand in hand with the introduction of inland rail. We need to be very wary of how we use our water resources. It is a major concern that far too much water is being lost through seepage and evaporation in irrigation channels. Spending money on infrastructure here would be a practical measure and savings could be made straightaway. The reworking of some of our older irrigation systems and channels is a solid proposal and I think it should be looked at. Another major infrastructure project that would be of major benefit in the Murray Darling Basin is the reworking of the Menindee Lakes. A massive amount of water is lost now to evaporation and we should look at deepening and re-engineering the Menindee Lakes sooner rather than later.

The other infrastructure we need to look at is health. In regional and rural Australia some of our health infrastructure is reaching the end of its use-by date. In the largest centre in my electorate, Dubbo, the New South Wales government are really struggling to maintain their services through the Dubbo Base Hospital. Dubbo Base Hospital services a population of approximately 200,000 people; most of western New South Wales is serviced through the Dubbo Base Hospital. It basically needs to be pulled down and replaced. The New South Wales government would need to look at the health infrastructure right throughout my electorate and indeed regional Australia.

The other piece of health infrastructure that I can see as looming with great importance is that, with the changing face of health professionals in Australia and more and more younger, particularly female, doctors coming into the system now, the idea of a doctor buying a practice and staying there for 20 or 30 years seems to be a thing of the past. Out of interest, my daughter is at the moment a fifth-year medical student. Most of her friends are female and most of them will work in regional Australia. But they possibly will not have the ability to purchase a large medical centre.

Under the previous government, through the Rural Medical Infrastructure Fund, in my local area the Gwydir Shire Council received a grant to go towards the construction of a walk-in, walk-out medical centre which at the moment is being built in the town of Warialda. This will provide facilities for doctors to work on a commission basis without having to outlay large sums of money to purchase the practice. Hopefully it will encourage more younger health professionals to come to regional areas without the financial burdens placed upon them. This would also provide opportunity for ancillary health services, such as speech pathology, physiotherapy, and even, hopefully, dentistry. As we look at the changing face of health in Australia, the government needs to be one step ahead and provide the infrastructure that is necessary.

Another very exciting proposal in my electorate is the health centre in Gunnedah. As late as earlier this week I wrote to Minister Roxon regarding this proposal. It is an idea that would be a partnership within the local community, through the council, the local state government managed health service, all the local general practitioners in the town, and the University of Newcastle. Not only would it provide a one-stop shopping town for general practitioners, specialists coming through on a revolving basis and ancillary health; it would also be a facility for Newcastle university to have a structured training program for their young health students coming through. One of the problems with training health professionals in regional Australia is that our GPs are overstretched at the moment with their workload and there is no structured mechanism for training these students. As we look at our overall infrastructure spend, our spend on health infrastructure is something that needs to be looked at.

The other one is energy. With the world approaching peak oil—if we have not already reached that point—and the soaring cost of petroleum, we need to spend money now on energy and alternative energy infrastructure. In my electorate there are some exciting possibilities. There is an indication that the gas fields in the Pilliga forest, west of Narrabri, will be a large resource, and I think it is very important that, as quickly as possible, we put in place the pipelines and infrastructure needed to spread that right across the country, for a number of reasons. For example, in my area in the town of Mudgee there is an abattoir now sitting idle that I am sure would reopen if it could get a supply of reliable, clean energy in the form of natural gas. It would provide not only a valuable outlet for cattle in my electorate but also a great boost to employment in the Mudgee area and help to build the population of that town. Another reason is to do with alternative fuels and the possibilities they bring, particularly ethanol: a reliable source of energy such as natural gas is vital to make the production of ethanol a viable alternative. As we run short of petroleum, we really are going to need to look at that issue.

Another source is solar energy. The area of north-west New South Wales has been identified as one of the most favourable places in Australia to put a solar power station. The daylight and sunlight hours are very suitable for that. It is also not in a remote location, so it can easily be hooked into the grid. I know that in the town of Moree, in the northern part of my electorate, the local council is looking at a proposal to install a solar power station to run in conjunction with a desalination plant—not for the specific reason of generating more drinking water but because tourism is a large part of the Moree shire. They rely heavily on the spa baths there, and the half-a-dozen or so commercial spa bath enterprises in the town are having an issue with disposal of their waste water. So the Moree community is looking at the very innovative approach of using solar power to desalinate this spa water and returning it to the system or selling it as potable water, as well as selling the mineral salts removed, a by-product of this process, to be used as stockfeed et cetera.

In conclusion, I believe that the future of this country does involve promoting growth in regional Australia, and expenditure on infrastructure is probably the single most positive thing that the government can do to promote that growth. That is why I am speaking in support of this bill, and I hope that the new Labor government will put infrastructure spending in regional Australia at the top of its list of priorities.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to speak in support of the Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008. I have been talking for many years about the vital importance of infrastructure, not just to the former members of my union, the Australian Workers Union, who built this infrastructure in so many parts of Australia, including regional and remote Australia, but also to business leaders and financiers involved in infrastructure projects. In my previous role I was involved in the EastLink project in Victoria, the largest road infrastructure in Australian history. It is worth $3.2 billion and I am pleased to say it is well ahead of schedule. I was involved in negotiating the industrial relations employment structure of the project. There has been enhanced productivity, with great wages and profitability for all concerned. As a result, this project will actually be delivered ahead of time, with, for a project of its size, an almost unprecedented safety record and a great degree of industrial harmony—all done pre Work Choices.

We all recognise that infrastructure is essential for economic growth. I do not believe that, in Australia, financial capability is a problem. There is no shortage of money. Yet in too many areas in Australia we see there are backlogs and we see that state governments have been left to fix up a lot of the problems caused due to the absence of leadership by the previous federal government. To put it bluntly, we have had any number of years of growth, largely on the back of the commodities boom, but we have wasted a massive opportunity to put the building blocks in place for the next 15 years. It should never be forgotten that, if you look at the estimates from 2002-03 forward to 2010-11, the extra money which the federal government was projected to have was to come to $457 billion. Yet, when we look around at the infrastructure bottlenecks, we look at the armada of bulk commodity carriers blockading Australia’s coal and commodity ports, we see massive neglect. In fact, $435 billion of that $457 billion was given away by the previous federal government.

It is time for a more strategic and long-term approach. We have shied away from a strategy for the development of Australia. We see blockages in how we fund projects. We have disputes and regulatory uncertainty which have to be dealt with. We often have a disconnect between what a regulator will view as a fair return, and on what cost basis, and what returns we need to give investors the incentive to invest in projects. Certainly the pricing of infrastructure in Australia is complex, but fortunately we have this bill, which will start the process of providing certainty for investors and Australians generally.

We need an overhaul of our federal-state relations, helping to define each level’s responsibilities. This proposed legislation, in conjunction with the new government’s approach on federal-state relations, will help to at least put some real teeth into the development of Australia’s infrastructure. The public want quick fixes, and that is understandable. Quite often we see that local activists can be more powerful than perhaps the large strategic direction. Without the sort of legislation we see in front of us, we face the risk that Australian investment money will go overseas to where the return is and where the opportunity is. In the competition for global capital, if we do not start focusing nationally on a strategic direction for our infrastructure, we will lose capital and we will lose the global race to nations with strategic priorities and good execution.

When we look at the serious bottlenecks, particularly in transport, water and broadband, we realise the nation’s capacity is being held back. To create economic growth we need to invest in infrastructure. Not only does infrastructure enhance economic growth; what we will do by improving infrastructure, particularly transport and energy infrastructure, is reduce the cost of doing business. Reducing infrastructure bottlenecks will help to try and re-cork the not so affectionately named ‘Liberal inflation genie’ which was released from the bottle by the previous government.

Developing our infrastructure will help us to capture export growth opportunities. For example, improving the rail links to major iron ore and local ports in the northern part of Western Australia and in New South Wales and Queensland will help capture opportunities to meet the high level of demand from China and India for our resources. As a young union official flying around the country, talking to workers in all of the energy producing and primary producing areas of Australia, it was a source of some national shame to see all these ships tied up offshore when in fact, if we had had national strategic leadership on this question, we could have been capitalising even further on the remarkable minerals boom globally.

We need leadership in infrastructure. That is what this legislation provides. I believe that politics in Australia needs to understand that there is a bigger risk of underreacting to infrastructure than there is of overreacting. Leadership is what this bill will provide—leadership that has long been on holiday in this nation. It will come as no surprise that it is a Labor government that is putting forward this bill, because Labor has always been the party of nation building, the party of the future, not the party of the past. Labor has always had long-term vision. Without long-term vision it is impossible to build the infrastructure this nation needs.

Early last year we celebrated the 75th anniversary of the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, a remarkable accomplishment. Look at the pictures of the Sydney Harbour Bridge when it was first opened. When it was planned and built in the early part of last century, when horses were still common in the streets of Sydney and cars were the province of the wealthy and the lucky, someone decided to build a bridge with eight car lanes. Who on earth, these days, is thinking about building roads which will cover our future needs as opposed to just our immediate needs? I think that that is the sort of planning for the future which we need to recapture.

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Build a new bridge!

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am not saying we need a Harbour Bridge everywhere, but certainly over the water. I do believe that Labor have that kind of vision where we are concerned not just about the next election or the opinion polls but about leaving a legacy which carries on after we have departed. The proof of this is that as early as May 2005 Labor announced that we would establish Infrastructure Australia. In August 2007 our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd—who was Leader of the Opposition then—reiterated that pledge. Kevin Rudd, our leader, said that Infrastructure Australia would deal with policy and regulatory issues, audit the adequacy of the nation’s infrastructure, identify weaknesses, prioritise projects, evaluate the business case of projects and financing options and manage the probity process.

The bill we are speaking to today has been years in the planning. The member for Cook has said that the Prime Minister is a new ‘father of federation’; it is certainly not a mantle that one would bestow on the most recent previous occupant of the prime ministership. Members of the opposition might not be aware that once upon a time we used to extol the virtues of nation building. It used to be something that our national government did as a matter of course. But for the last 11 years, regrettably, this nation’s national leadership has been asleep in some sort of infrastructure coma, from which Labor has had to awaken the nation.

Back in 2003 the Allen Consulting Group prepared a report for the Property Council of Australia about financing urban public infrastructure. They pointed to compelling evidence linking investment in public infrastructure with productivity growth and economic prosperity.

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You will not hear this from Warren Truss.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We will come to the National Party in a moment, Member for Melbourne Ports. The report argued that, in addition to underpinning economic performance, public infrastructure also features in the social and environmental capital that binds our communities and makes them livable. Two years later, in 2005, that notorious ‘left-wing’ organisation the Business Council of Australia called for urgent action on Australia’s infrastructure problems, warning that the problem of infrastructure blockages was the single greatest barrier to our future prosperity. Unfortunately, whilst the message was put in the bottle, no-one in the government ever collected the message on infrastructure from the beach.

There has been no coherent nationwide planning, coordination or strategy in respect of this nation’s national infrastructure needs. What we inherited from the last government—other than high inflation, foreign debt and slip-sliding productivity—is costly bottlenecks in our export and supply chains. Unfortunately, many of our industries still have to rely on inefficient and outdated infrastructure. And let us not forget education infrastructure. That has been forgotten for too long—for the last 11 years, under the last government.

While Labor has a long-term vision, the previous government lived in a mendicant-surplus state from budget to budget, election year after election year, spreading its largesse in the most short-term of conclusions. Last year’s budget was a typical example of this mendicant tax banditry of the previous government. It was an election year budget that once again was long on short-term largesse but short on long-term ideas about the challenges facing the nation.

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Windsor interjecting

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for New England again correctly identifies the failures of the previous government in infrastructure. The 2007 federal budget showed more than anything that the Howard government continued its failure to wisely invest the proceeds of the sustained economic growth brought on by the minerals boom. Parking large amounts of money in the Future Fund and not-so-large amounts of money in endowment funds, with virtually no detail of how it would be spent, is not planning for the future, especially when you actually ban your Future Fund from investing in infrastructure. If I were feeling polite—which I am—I would just say that this is fiscally sloppy. If I were feeling slightly more adventurous, I would look for the collective noun for a group of pork-barrels—maybe it is a piggery.

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Maybe it is a National Party!

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Words fail me. When you cannot call a clear strategy or pathway from the opposition, do not be concerned that it is a temporary state of affairs. In government, the opposition certainly was not demonstrating any sort of foresight about how this country might look in 10, 20 and 30 years time. That was just never on the radar of the previous government.

What we saw for 11 years was the failure of the Howard government to invest in infrastructure. They sold more than they built. Thank goodness for the nation their reign has come to an end. We in the Labor government, given the trust of the Australian people, have inherited the consequences of these long years of mendicant investment in Australia’s infrastructure. Infrastructure Partnerships Australia—again, not another left-wing think tank—has estimated that there was a $25 billion underinvestment at the national level in pretty much everything from roads to sewage—everything from the letter A to the letter Z. That has been costing us around $6.4 billion each year in lost production.

The Reserve Bank of Australia has said over and over again—20 times in the last three years—that capacity constraints are constraining our exports and economic growth. In fact, Rupert Murdoch—not a notorious Fabian—kindly pointed out to us last year that the broadband services in this country were a disgrace. Australia has one of the worst telecommunications infrastructures in the Western world, and it has been left to our own minister for telecommunications, Senator the Hon. Stephen Conroy, to fix these problems. It has taken a while, and the release of a great Labor policy, for the former government to discover broadband, even though they went for an inferior option. They have been short-sighted.

I think Reg Ansett, talking about the 727s that he brought back from the United States in the late 1960s, spelled out the sorts of aspirations and dreams that we should have for our infrastructure. He said about these planes he purchased in the late 1960s:

They are the best technology (or planes) in the world so they are just good enough for Australia.

Reg Ansett understood that we should be ambitious for the best infrastructure in the world. We need the best in the world in order for Australia to be competitive and to drive growth and productivity. We are a small nation of 21 million people on the edge of the fastest growing economic miracle in the world—Asia—but the rest of the world does not owe us a living. We have to make our own future. Indeed, this bill is the start of the process of having a national voice and direction in terms of infrastructure. The new Labor government understands the need for Australia to have the best.

The reception of this bill outside of this place speaks volumes for the wisdom of this legislation. The chairman of Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, Mark Birrell, formerly Liberal leader in the Victorian upper house, in January this year hailed the creation of Infrastructure Australia. I must acknowledge that I have not always quoted what he said with approval in previous debates but in this one we are of one voice. He said:

The creation of Infrastructure Australia is the most important reform this sector has ever seen when it comes to having much-needed national leadership to meet Australia’s critical infrastructure needs.

Mark Birrell also applauded Labor’s inclusive approach. He said:

The Government’s infrastructure plan had been well communicated to construction and finance companies over the last year and there has been a detailed dialogue between business and the Government on how to deliver Australia’s next round of infrastructure.

Mitch Young, from Lighthouse Infrastructure, has called the plan ‘logical, necessary and politically courageous’. Engineers Australia called it a ‘long needed link to form a true partnership between the three spheres of government, business and the community’.

I served on the board of the second-largest superannuation fund in Australia—AustralianSuper—for 10 years and I know that the superannuation industry is excited about the prospect of investing in this nation’s infrastructure. Currently just 3.1 per cent of superannuation funds are directed at infrastructure but little of this, tragically, is spent in Australia because under the previous government there was no big picture to invest in. Sid Bone, CEO of a fund that I was formerly a director of, the Victorian Funds Management Corporation, says that he would like to invest in more Australian projects. We just need the opportunity.

This bill is an important part of our fight to try and recork the Liberal genie of inflation, carelessly and recklessly released over the last number of years. I believe this is a fiscally responsible bill; I believe it is a visionary bill. It is going to be good for the workers who build the great infrastructure projects of Australia. It is good for business, it is good for the economy and it is good for the future of our nation. It is good at last to see a Commonwealth government re-assuming its true leadership role in infrastructure. For me, this bill and all the discussion on infrastructure drill down to capacity building—to building Australian capacity for this 21st century.

When I think about capacity building, I think of physical infrastructure, of people, of generating ideas and innovation, of dealing with the current rigidity between the three levels of government, of education and skills, of public transport and health, and of reforming the regulatory frameworks, which should be a source of innovation and competition, not a dead hand to resist development. But when I think about this bill and about capacity building, I think about the encouragement of private investment. The private sector is the doing arm of the Australian economy, but what it needs is regulatory certainty, the reward of encouraging competition and long-term thinking. I understand that change not only comes from within this place; it also comes from outside this place. But, with this infrastructure bill, I think we are seeing politics catching up to where the community and business already are.

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I listened to the previous speaker with some degree of interest. Some of the phrases we have heard before in terms of infrastructure, and I just hope that the leadership that Mr Shorten spoke of is actually demonstrated in this particular and very important area.

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You mean the member for Maribyrnong.

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry, yes, I could not think of it. I think the government will be judged on this particular issue more so than on many of the other issues that are out there in the public arena. And they will be judged for a number of reasons. Obviously infrastructure is very important and has been overlooked on a number of occasions. There has been a lot of debate and words articulated in this place on this. I will be supporting the Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008. I think the concept is a good idea and I do not think there is any doubt about it, but there will be judgement about the way in which it is carried through.

I will give one indication of where I feel governments have let infrastructure down in the past, and I would not like to see the current government repeat those mistakes. It revolves around the issue of fuel taxation. In this country we pay, depending on where we live, something like 50c, 51c or 52c a litre tax—38c of that is fuel excise and the balance is GST. The fuel excise is an impost on our community. We should remember why that was put in place—I think it was Malcolm Fraser who put it in place. It was put in place to address potential fuel shocks; we really needed to price our fuel so that when the fuel shock came along it was not such a great jump in terms of the economy. Then it developed into a system of paying for our roads. There was the road maintenance tax. Now it has evolved into an area of revenue which is anti-infrastructure, in a sense.

There is $14 billion raised through fuel excise—not through the GST, just the excise itself. About $2 billion of that can be tracked back to any form of road or rail maintenance—and you might get the odd bus shelter in eastern Sydney or something like that. About $2 billion, or one-seventh, of those funds being collected is actually going into some form of infrastructure. There is a whole range of mixed messages out there and I think one thing the government does need to do is to clarify some of these signals. Is fuel taxation there to raise revenue? Is it there to pay for infrastructure? Is it there to convert everybody’s V8 into a four-cylinder? Is it there to send a pricing signal to stop people using their vehicles or to reduce fuel? Some clarification is needed in that area. If it is there for infrastructure, there is a massive amount of money in an annual sense that could be used for infrastructure, rather than the nonsense we have seen in recent years and all the words we have heard, similar words to those we have heard today, and where very little is delivered in terms of actual bridge building and major infrastructure projects. In fact, the debate of recent years has been to sell some of those projects. The Snowy hydro is back in the news again. We hear the ferrets are in the building undermining the decision that was made by the previous Prime Minister—not the previous government. The Liberal Party, the National Party and the Labor Party, and Victoria and New South Wales all agreed that it should be sold.

That is where the community is having a difficulty with the so-called leadership in the infrastructure debate. Who is leading whom where? People would like to know that the public—the public purse, the taxpayer—has a role in relation to the provision of infrastructure that provides for the public good in the long run. Whether it be a railway line from Narrabri to Newcastle or an extra terminal to extract coal or grain, people need to know where the government sits in terms of the allocation of public moneys to public infrastructure—the bridge-building that the member for Maribyrnong quite rightly spoke about. They need to know it from this government, because they got mixed messages from the previous government. There are still those mixed messages out there and I think some of those mixed messages show up. If you look at the second reading speech of the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, there is the normal banter to start with and then he says:

Well-planned infrastructure is the arteries of a successful, modern economy and essential to:

making our cities liveable and improving public health ...

What does ‘making our cities livable’ mean in terms of infrastructure? What it seems to mean at the moment—if you live anywhere near Sydney, for instance—is more roads, more freeways, more public-private partnerships and more money being expended on the development of a road system that continually chokes itself. What does that mean in terms of improving public health? It means poorer public health—more greenhouse gas, more pollution and more lung disorders in the Sydney basin—and a whole range of related health problems. Does the bill make sure Infrastructure Australia delivers in terms of these things? Or are we going to find a reason for expending more money on more freeways, which are pathways to nowhere, instead of making our cities more livable and improving our public health? That is a question that the new minister has to address and answer. One of the answers—and I did not see any mention of it in the second reading speech, although there are a couple of words that refer to regional areas—may well be to change policy, rather than having a policy mix which draws people into these conglomerates that suffer from issues of livability and public health problems. One of the solutions may well be to develop real policy that encourages people to leave these areas, and I hope to see some of those sorts of initiatives.

The second point that the minister makes is: ‘bringing economic opportunities to regional and rural communities’. I do not want to criticise this government at the moment, but I have not seen any changes yet. The former government had a policy mix that, even though the rhetoric was out there encouraging rural and regional communities, perpetuated the population losses in regional and rural communities. The seat of Gwydir disappeared off the map because it had the greatest loss of population of any region in Australia. Tasmania used to be in front of it but has picked up in recent years. So the slippage occurs. With all the words for the last 10 or 12 years about how it was all going to happen with the new regional policies and the new regional this and regional that, the policy mix did not change it at all. The incentives were to go to Sydney or Melbourne, to go to the urbanised areas. I look forward to seeing some real policy on the ground that encourages opportunities in regional and rural communities.

Most renewable energy generation—solar, wind, geothermal, biofuels—would be located in the country. But we do not see, and have not seen in the past decade, a policy mix that really encourages that. We have this farcical circumstance where renewable energy targets—and Deputy Speaker Scott would remember this—were put in place in, I think, the year 2000 but there is actually less renewable energy now, eight years later in a 10-year arrangement, than there was when the targets were put in place. That is the breakdown between the verbal arguments we have in here and the practice out there. In fact, we have got this absurd situation where, if you are a biofuel producer in Australia at the moment, in 2011 you will be taxed. How does that send an incentive, when the minister is talking here about improving public health and creating opportunities in regional and rural areas? Where does the biofuel mix fit in? Why would you have a taxation regime that applies to something that is renewable? I thought we were trying to encourage that in this country. I just find those issues to be quite extraordinary. Hopefully, the new minister and the new government will remove those things.

It is quite obvious that there has been a breakdown in the system in the last decade in delivering products to markets. We have an absurd situation in New South Wales at the moment, which the previous Commonwealth government was involved in. A great vision for the future was proposed in here about how the Australian Rail Track Corporation was going to create a national rail system that would make things so much better in delivering products to our markets in New South Wales. The New South Wales ownership—I think it was called FreightCorp at the time—was sold off, and the New South Wales Labor government was delighted to get rid of it because that meant it was in receipt of money. The Commonwealth saw this great network of connections as a great way of uniting the nation. Very little funding went into it; very little happened. There is a little bit of infrastructure here and there—a little bit up the coast, for instance.

What is happening in New South Wales? Pacific National—and the member for Parkes would be fully aware of this—has recently said that it will not cart wheat anymore. What is the reaction of government? It is: ‘The Australian Rail Track Corporation is essentially a public company owned by a government, so we can’t interfere too much.’ New South Wales says: ‘That’s got nothing to do with us anymore. We got out of that a few years back.’ In my view, if infrastructure is a serious thing with the Commonwealth government it should be involved in the objective of delivering products to markets, because we are going to have a situation where potentially there will be one of the biggest wheat crops in New South Wales, occurring at a time of the highest international prices, and that product base may not be able to get to market. I think the Commonwealth has a role there. It played a role in Tasmania some years ago when the same company pulled out of transporting freight in Tasmania. The Commonwealth government came in with a package, and freight is back on rail in Tasmania—again, a mixed message. How serious are the government and this minister about delivering on some of these things? If they are serious, they have got to be involved.

There is the Murrurundi tunnel, for instance, in my electorate. There was a lot of hoo-ha in here about the inland freight railway line, which I might mention in a minute if I get time. In the Ernst & Young document that was put together, the $5 million survey—not the $15 million one, the other one that was done or the three or four others that have been gathering dust on this particular concept—identified freight movement across Australia as an issue. On the eastern side of Australia—Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland—220 million tonnes of freight go somewhere. Half of that total freight consignment, 110 million tonnes, goes through the Hunter Valley or the north-west, New England part of the state. Half of the total freight on the eastern seaboard is probably within 300 kilometres of Newcastle. The Murrurundi tunnel, an antiquated tunnel that was built for steam trains—a tunnel at the top of a hill, in a sense—will be a bottleneck once the port facilities are improved in Newcastle. I would have thought that infrastructure for half the freight on the eastern side of this country would be a key piece of infrastructure that would be worthy of the investment of a lot of money—maybe some of the fuel taxation money that is raised or maybe the new fund that is going to be set up. I would have thought that that would be a key piece of infrastructure. Instead, the debate has been on the inland rail.

I am not against the inland rail concept, and I would encourage people to have a look at what Everald Compton is going to be doing, because he is going to be investing his own money. He is sick of waiting for government and sick of the games that have been played. But if we examine the Ernst & Young report on the inland rail link we see that the freight between Melbourne and Brisbane that is going to bypass Sydney, because of the congestion and all those good reasons, is 3.75 million tonnes. All that talk and billions of dollars to be expended for 3.75 million tonnes. At the most, that equates to two trains a day going each way, to compete with a 24-hour truck service—and there is 110 million tonnes of freight in the Hunter Valley and the north-west, New England system.

The most expensive tunnel option is $280 million. There is no mention of that. There has been all this politicking about Melbourne and Brisbane and the trains not stopping anywhere except maybe to pick up a bit of wheat that could go north out of Moree. Remember all the politics in relation to that—a stake being driven into the river at Goondiwindi five or six years ago—and nothing happened. Now we have another inquiry, initiated by the previous government but being carried on. I congratulate Everald Compton and urge members to get behind him—and, Deputy Speaker Scott, I know you are aware of the project as well—because he is the only one who is doing anything. I would not hold my breath for any government in terms of the inland rail concept because everybody has said that it has to be private-sector friendly.

The minister went on to talk about reducing business costs. I have gone through that. One of our major costs in a country of this size is fuel, and we tax it. We have a whole range of other policies that actually send the wrong message. I should also have mentioned at the start that telecommunications is very important. I congratulate Senator Stephen Conroy for actually pulling the lever on a few of the things that have been allowed to go on. Telecommunications is the most important infrastructure this century because it removes distances—the great disadvantage of living in the country. It changes the economic equation. If you want to have a more livable life, improve public health, have some economic opportunities and deliver your product to market, if it is an IT product, you are far better off living in the country, and your kids will be better off as well.

People are starting to recognise that, but they will only recognise that if government has a role in a regulatory sense in making sure that there is equity of access to both quality and price of the product. There is no way that Telstra will do that unfettered. The sell-out by the National Party, the National Farmers Federation and those other corporate friendlies that masqueraded as representatives of country Australians will live on as one of the great disgraces of this place and one of the great cons in infrastructure. I urge Senator Conroy to maintain the rage about the conversion from CDMA to Next G and to look at the regulatory arrangements.

We have an absurd situation developing now. I use the example of Yetman. I know there are people in this room that know Yetman. Telstra Country Wide made it plain to them that they were not viable in terms of mobile services. I attended a meeting—a number of others were there—where it was articulated that if the community built the tower, provided electricity to the tower, provided a road to the tower and provided maintenance to the tower then Telstra Country Wide would place an antenna on top of it, and that community could have access to mobile services. Now Telstra are saying that that was two years ago and we now have to put in for funding and we have to put a plan in, moving away from the commitment that was given at that meeting. It is farcical. It is a demonstration of what happens when you remove government from the leadership role in terms of infrastructure. We are hearing all about this particular bill being part of the new leadership for infrastructure. I would urge all members to look at some of the issues I have spoken about. (Time expired)

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008, which delivers on our election commitment to establish Infrastructure Australia. The first task of the new body will be to identify and implement projects based on the benefit they provide to Australia, not the benefit they provide to any one seat. Developing a blueprint will be the easy part; the hard part will be implementation. It will require real leadership and real commitment. It will require a real increase in the investment that we place in physical infrastructure: road and rail, port infrastructure, energy, water and communications. It will require us to make better use of the infrastructure that we have already got, to make it work more efficiently. And it will require an integrated approach, working with state and local governments, with the private sector and, most importantly, with the community. This is an important part of the government’s plans for the future.

The work of Infrastructure Australia will take time to have a real impact. Infrastructure takes time to build, but if we get it right it will have a lasting impact. It will provide real and tangible benefits, both for this generation and the ones that follow. The genesis of Infrastructure Australia was forged in the Labor tradition of nation-building—like Chifley and the Snowy scheme, Whitlam sewering our major cities and towns, and Keating’s Better Cities Program. This government invokes the same commitment, the same Labor ethos, to meet the challenges of this century—projects like building the high-speed fibre-to-the-node broadband network and the $500 million Housing Affordability Fund to reduce the cost of developing new housing estates. Projects like these will make our cities more livable and more productive.

Good infrastructure often goes unnoticed. We notice it when it is not there or when it does not work. Good infrastructure is an important part of building a stronger and a fairer country. Good infrastructure helps the economy and improves the quality of life of the people who use it. As Christopher Brown, the Managing Director of TTF, wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald last year:

A young person denied the right to clean, safe and efficient transport links is the same person denied the right to education, recreation and participation in the workforce. An elderly person denied access to transport is the same person denied access to health services and quality of life. Urban transport is a social, as well as an economic, policy area.

That is why this bill and this body are so important. Good infrastructure is needed to help build a stronger, better and fairer Australia. It underpins our social policy agenda. It does this by providing equity and it does this by helping to tackle inflation. Inflation is now the highest it has been in 16 years. That is what we inherited: the highest inflation in 16 years, the second-highest inflation rate in the developed world. This is a complex problem that requires a number of responses. One is investment in the infrastructure needed to improve business productivity, infrastructure that makes business more efficient.

That means investing in our cities. Australia is one of the most urbanised countries in the world: 70 per cent of Australians live in our major cities. Our eight capital cities contribute about 78 per cent of the nation’s economic growth. They are the engine room of our economy. Connecting people and places is good for our economy, whether that is on the road, on a train or in cyberspace. Unclogging our roads and our rail lines is good for the economy. Time lost has an opportunity cost: time when we could be with family, at school, at work or at another job; time when freight could be on the shelves, not sitting on the dock, on a ship or on the road. Congestion on our roads already costs us $16 billion a year, or two per cent of GDP. The Business Council of Australia predicts this figure will climb to $30 billion by 2020. That is $30 billion of wasted time.

The former government took a narrow view of their infrastructure responsibilities. They said their responsibility was to manage the economy, and that principally meant moving freight. I contend that that is a myopic approach. Making cities work, making the country work, making the economy work means moving freight, but it also means moving people. It means tackling congestion in all its forms. The minister for infrastructure made this point when he addressed the National Press Club in February. He said:

… a policy for moving goods will not work without a policy for moving people.

It is motorists in their cars much more than truckies in their cabs that are clogging our cities.

The more efficient our transport network is, the more productive our economy will be. So here lies the challenge: encouraging growth and productivity by building additional capacity into our road, bus and rail networks, and providing real incentives for commuters to shift to public transport.

A good example of this challenge is the passenger and freight growth that is occurring around Sydney airport and Port Botany in Sydney. Together they contribute tens of billions of dollars to our economy and they employ more than 100,000 people. In the next decade or so, they are predicted to expand dramatically. Passenger movements at the airport are expected to expand from the current 28 million movements per year up to 60 million, and the number of containers at the port is expected to expand from 1.5 million per annum to three million. Making Sydney work means making this port precinct work. It is critical that surrounding and connecting infrastructure can support this growth, and that is why a dedicated freight line supported by a constellation of intermodal terminals is essential. But the existing congestion around this corridor, around this precinct, means we also need to increase the capacity of the road network. This means either duplicating the congested M5 East or a link to the port through a future M4 East.

Infrastructure problems are not limited to our transport network. Our broadband network is also in desperate need of investment. It is a decade behind other developed countries. There is no prize for coming 25th in the world, behind countries like Poland, Hungary and Slovenia. That is why we are building a high-speed broadband network with speeds up to 100 times faster than those available in most homes. It is one of the most important things we can do to make us more competitive, to make the economy more productive.

The national infrastructure audit is an important first step. It will help ensure we invest in projects that deliver the maximum benefit and build for current and future demand. It will ensure we match dollars with real priorities and establish a timetable for delivery. The hard part, as I said earlier, is delivery. Infrastructure Australia, like all good initiatives, will be judged not by its purpose but by the outcomes it produces.

The task is enormous. ABN Amro estimates that the total infrastructure spend across the country over the next decade could reach $400 billion. It will require the government to fund many of these projects, but the sheer scale of the task means we also need to engage the skills and the resources of the private sector. If that is left untapped, many projects will be unnecessarily delayed, the problems will grow and these funds will drift overseas.

Australian superannuation funds already have plenty to invest—$1.4 trillion. It is the fourth largest funds management industry in the world and it is expected to swell to $2 trillion by 2020. Infrastructure is the perfect fit for super funds looking for long-term investments with stable returns. If we do not use these funds to build infrastructure, other countries will. That would be a real and inexcusable tragedy. Our super funds are already investing in overseas infrastructure projects—fair enough—but I would rather have Australia get the benefit of these funds than somewhere else.

I welcome the minister’s announcement that nationally consistent guidelines for PPPs will be finalised by the end of the year, at the same time as the national audit. It is important that these guidelines encourage competition and increased transparency, that they emphasise the importance not just of the construction phase of an asset but of its long-term operations and that they enshrine sustainability and good corporate citizenship—for example, customer service standards.

We also need to invest in projects that not only deliver the maximum productivity return but also encourage a bit of innovative thinking. Big projects take time to build and to have an impact. We can have an immediate impact by making better use of existing infrastructure. Imagine the impact we would have on productivity and people’s lives if we could reduce congestion on our roads and on our rail network immediately by encouraging commuters to use the road and rail networks outside busy periods. There are a number of possible ways to do this: peak and off-peak pricing and changes to working hours are just two.

I note with interest that the Victorian government has just commenced a campaign called ‘Flex in the City’, which encourages employers to allow their employees to start and finish outside traditional peak hours. Employers who sign up to the program allow staff to start work at 7 am and finish early or to start work at 10 am and finish at 6 pm. Flexible working hours can improve the ways that cities work and make them more livable. As KPMG demographer Bernard Salt said:

The problem is, everyone’s trying to get to work for a 9am start … If that can be mitigated or spread across a 7-10am start, then it has the effect of spreading the load in a wider area and making the journey to work more bearable for everyone concerned.

Last week the Victorian government announced that it was expanding its trial of free travel before 7 am to the entire rail network. I look forward to seeing the results of the trial. Another way to tackle this problem could be to adjust retail trading hours. If retail stores across a metropolitan area opened at 10 am instead of 9 am many workers and shoppers would travel outside the existing peak and travel later in the day, potentially reducing congestion on our road and rail network. I think it is an idea worthy of investigation.

For the last decade national leadership on infrastructure has been lacking, and that is what this bill addresses. It brings the work of nation building to the COAG table. We need to work together in partnership. The biggest issues in this country can only be solved by us working together. That is what the people of Australia expect. They do not want bickering; they just want things fixed. They want goods on the shelf, they want to get to work on time and they want power and information at their fingertips. That is what they pay us for—to make these things possible. This is the purpose of Infrastructure Australia: to build a new nation; to build on our proud record of nation building; to build a stronger economy and a stronger country; and to build the infrastructure we need today and tomorrow. For these reasons, I commend the bill to the chamber.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I speak in support of the Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008. This bill is an important part of Labor’s election commitment to the people of Australia, fulfilled within 100 days of coming to office. A nationwide coordinated approach to infrastructure is crucially important to the improvement of Australia’s economic development. We face the economic challenges of rising inflation, rising interest rates and falling productivity. In such a difficult economic climate we need a clear and open mechanism to evaluate the work of infrastructure projects and to examine those investment opportunities which best add value to productivity and performance. Infrastructure Australia will have responsibility for creating a road map for Australia’s infrastructure needs presently and into the future. Infrastructure Australia will coordinate and cooperate with state and local governments to identify those projects which enhance national productivity and economic performance and which create jobs, wealth and opportunity.

We need an audit of Australia’s infrastructure needs and an infrastructure priority list within 12 months for COAG. We need regular audits to ascertain the state of infrastructure and where it will assist growth. Those reports need to go to COAG so that nationally significant infrastructure projects can be monitored and developed. We need a national approach to reviewing national needs.

Proper business cases should be made on all projects which have national significance. Those obstacles and blockages to projects—whether they relate to law, land use planning, financial matters, guidelines or regulation difficulties—must be overcome.

Infrastructure Australia will be established as a statutory advisory council with a membership of 12. Nine members—one of whom must have local government experience and expertise—will be nominated by the federal government, with five, including the chair, being from the private sector. Three will be nominated by the states and territories. It is a partnership. It is the Rudd Labor government looking to build the future in cooperation with the private sector and the state governments.

I commend the appointment of Sir Rod Eddington as the inaugural chair of Infrastructure Australia. It is reassuring that someone of Sir Rod’s calibre has been chosen. It is a tremendous choice. He will bring strong leadership and formidable business experience to the role, drawing on his three-decade career in domestic and international transport and aviation. I am confident he will lead the new national body with aplomb. Infrastructure Australia means infrastructure development will not be delivered based on the marginality of a member’s seat—a practice of the previous Howard government.

I look forward to what Infrastructure Australia says concerning my seat of Blair, which is a rural and regional seat. Just five minutes from my electorate office you are in the rural areas of Blair. I look forward to what Infrastructure Australia says concerning the transport and rail needs of the people of Blair. Outside of Ipswich, we do not have any public transport. In terms of railways, we only have one rail line to Brisbane. I commend the state government for extending another rail line through the Springfield area to Ipswich. When it comes to roads, I look forward to what Infrastructure Australia has to say concerning the Cunningham Highway, which is breaking away near Aratula; the shoulders of the road are a danger to life and limb. I look forward to what Infrastructure Australia has to say concerning the Warrego Highway, which has over 28,000 vehicles a day travelling upon it. It is the main linkage for people living west of Ipswich through to Toowoomba and the rural areas on the Darling Downs.

Labor has a proud history of infrastructure development. As a young boy growing up in Ipswich, I saw the benefit of Labor governments and what they did for Ipswich. Locally, a good friend of mine, former Ipswich Mayor Des Freeman, a former organiser with the coalminers federation, would often tell me when I was growing up that it was a Whitlam Labor government—a Labor government—which could be credited with bringing sewerage to Ipswich. Growing up I saw what Labor governments did for road development and rail networks. The Ipswich Civic Centre, which hosted the annual business awards of the Ipswich Chamber of Commerce last Saturday evening, which I attended, was built by funding received courtesy of the Whitlam Labor government—a great project.

I am pleased to say that the new Rudd Labor government takes seriously the infrastructure needs of my electorate of Blair. The Rudd Labor government will deliver $10 million for the redevelopment of the Ipswich central business district, a project sorely needed. This will be undertaken in partnership with the Ipswich City Council through its integrated plan and under the auspices of the Queensland state Labor government’s Ipswich integrated strategy and action plan announced recently.

Perhaps the greatest failure of the Howard coalition government concerning the infrastructure needs of Blair, and why Infrastructure Australia should have been established so many years ago, is best demonstrated by the state of the Ipswich Motorway. The Ipswich Motorway is a source of frustration, delays and despair for the people of Blair. Up to 100,000 vehicles a day at peak times travel along this four-lane national highway.

The Ipswich Motorway is a danger to life, limb and property. Accidents occur on a daily basis. People—the thousands of Ipswichians who commute every day—leave for Brisbane early because they have to put up with delays. People listen to traffic reports on the radio and on the TV and plan their trips accordingly. The Ipswich Motorway acts as a bottleneck. It is a burden to the people and an obstacle to growth.

In early 1999 the Howard coalition government commissioned the Queensland state government and paid for a report to be prepared on local infrastructure needs between Ipswich and Brisbane, particularly with reference to the Ipswich Motorway. The recommendation of the Kellogg, Brown and Root report was to upgrade the Ipswich Motorway to six lanes and put service roads down the side, this having been a national highway since 1974. What did the Howard coalition government do on this infrastructure project—it was then, I might add, costed at $600 million—which is vital to the people of Ipswich and its rural surrounds? It did simply nothing—nothing for years. The Howard government was asleep at the wheel not just in terms of infrastructure but in terms of the Ipswich Motorway. The previous coalition government came up with an alternative bypass costed at $3 billion. They announced it only months from the election in 2007, and without any cost-benefit analysis. No business case was prepared before nearly $3 billion of taxpayers’ money was pledged for only 10 kilometres of road—only half the distance between Ipswich and Brisbane.

If only there had been Infrastructure Australia there to advise the Howard coalition government. If only the Howard coalition government had adopted a national approach and not an irrational approach to infrastructure needs in Blair. Only the Rudd Labor government is interested in the infrastructure needs of Blair and only the Rudd Labor government will fix the Ipswich Motorway. Infrastructure Australia will benefit the people of Blair by creating a roadmap for the future. Only the Rudd Labor government has the determination to do it. And only the Rudd Labor government will create Infrastructure Australian to look at business needs, and planning, legal and other obstacles for the people of Blair.

I say this as someone who has been in business for 21 years: you do not just set up your business and expect it to run rationally and economically soundly. You set up your business by planning it, structuring it and working out what you need. You look at the needs of infrastructure—the fixtures and fittings of the business, and the staffing and all those sorts of things. You do it properly. You plan, construct and develop. You look at what needs to be done. You do not just say ‘I’ve got the money in my back pocket and I’ll just spend it willy-nilly’ because it feels good at the time.

I commend the government for this initiative. This initiative will make a real difference in a rural and regional seat like Blair. It will make a practical difference in the life of the people. I look forward to the day when they do not have to turn those radios and TVs on early just to find out whether the Ipswich Motorway is blocked. I look forward to the day when I can drive on the six-lane Ipswich Motorway built by the Rudd Labor government, with service roads down the side so that the people of Ipswich and the rural surrounds will have the kind of infrastructure they need for their safety, their health and the benefit of the working families of Blair. I commend the bill.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the member for Blair and congratulate him and the member for Blaxland on their election to this joint. Based on their contributions this morning to this debate on the Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008, I think they are going to be valuable contributors to the debates of this parliament. Obviously they have a very clear knowledge of their responsibilities in terms of representing their electorates’ interests, so I want to congratulate them for their contributions.

There is no question that infrastructure is the veins through which the lifeblood of our economy flows. Proper systems of road, rail, shipping, telecommunications, ports et cetera are essential to keep our country strong and our economy growing. Shortfalls in infrastructure will result inevitably in bottlenecks in delivering products to market, as is evident in the capacity constraints faced in areas of Queensland and the Hunter Valley. These bottlenecks place extra costs on businesses, act as a brake on economic and productivity growth, and create inflationary pressures.

The importance of good infrastructure cannot be assessed just in economic terms. It has a direct effect on communities. I know this only too well—as I am sure you do, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott—from living in the Northern Territory and representing some of the remotest parts of Australia in the seat of Lingiari. The provision of infrastructure in places like these takes on a whole new dimension. Vast distances between population centres and a high number of remote and rural communities create a unique set of issues in delivering reliable infrastructure and ensuring people can access the services they deserve as citizens of this nation.

We have to address these infrastructure issues. People who live in these parts of Australia have unique constraints in terms of infrastructure which affect the way in which people live their daily lives, whether or not they live in any of the communities across my electorate of Lingiari, be it Alice Springs, Gove, Bathurst Island, or on Christmas Island or the Cocos Islands—two island communities in the middle of the Indian Ocean, 3½ thousand kilometres from Perth, both of which are part of my electorate. I commend the member for Blair for demonstrating the extreme shortfalls of the Howard government’s approach to infrastructure and the capacity constraints that have resulted from it in developing the Australian economy. It was the Rudd Labor government which highlighted infrastructure as a major priority—indeed, a key priority—with this piece of legislation being one of its first acts after election.

As a result of this legislation, for the first time since Federation the Commonwealth government has an infrastructure minister and an infrastructure department. It is clear that this government has put infrastructure front and centre on our agenda for economic development for this country. By doing so, it shows the irresponsibility of the previous government in neglecting its obligations to the Australian community. There are doubtless and apparent shortfalls to be overcome after 11½ years of absolute neglect by the previous government. In 2004, the Australian Council of Infrastructure Development estimated that the lack of investment in the nation’s infrastructure over many years cost the economy around $6.4 billion a year in lost production. The OECD ranks Australia 20th out of 25 countries when it comes to investment in public infrastructure as a proportion of national income. Given the nature of the Australian continent, the dispersal of the Australian population and the need for infrastructure development, this defies belief when we know that investment in infrastructure generates higher returns than investment in other sectors of the economy.

This piece of legislation is vitally important to this nation and its future. It delivers on our commitment to establish a statutory advisory council—Infrastructure Australia—to develop a strategic blueprint for the nation’s future infrastructure needs. It is not my intention to pursue the issue of Infrastructure Australia any further because it has been outlined by others quite significantly and well and I am conscious of the time line for this debate. But I do want to demonstrate some of the unique and significant infrastructure shortfalls and needs for the people of the Northern Territory. They are not unfamiliar to you, I am sure, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott.

One significant area is, of course, that of roads. For Territorians, not only are they our lifeline in terms of getting service in communities, but the nature of our economy means they are vital to the economic growth of the Northern Territory. We have approaching 300,000 live cattle exports crossing Darwin’s wharf every year, something I am sure would be close to your heart, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott. Then there are the mining companies which are developing in the inner Northern Territory and which use the Northern Territory’s roads. There is the significance of the tourism industry. And there is the need to have road infrastructure, the networks of roads, properly serviced to allow the very diverse numbers of communities to be connected with one another and the wider economy. In much of the Territory bitumen is scarce, and failing bush roads between scattered remote communities and pastoral properties are the norm.

Many communities in the Top End in particular face isolation year after year with the coming of the wet season. Roads are flooded and made impassable. People living in these communities can be cut off for months at a time from the delivery of supplies and essential services. As an example, the Wollogorang Road runs 262 kilometres east of Borroloola through to Queensland. Borroloola is in the south-eastern part of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Along it there are 10 major stream crossings, excluding the McArthur River crossing, which are closed to access for varying periods over each wet season. The McArthur River crossing is impassable for more than eight weeks each wet season. Locals have to resort to using small aluminium boats to cross the river, and in doing so expose themselves to the danger of strong and unpredictable currents. On the other side of the Territory, the Port Keats Road, or Wadeye road, connects the community of Wadeye to the outside world. A number of stream crossings become impassable during the wet. The causeway across the Daly River, for example, closes the road for an average of 114 days a year, with longer closures in years of extreme rainfall. In 2005-06, the road was closed for 210 days.

I know it is difficult for people in this place to understand what that means. I say to the member for Banks: if the Hume Highway were cut for 210 days a year, what would it mean to the people of Sydney? What would it mean to the people of Melbourne? What would it mean to the people of Canberra?

Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It would be a disaster.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He rightly points out that it would mean disaster. The costs of this disaster, the closure of a road of this nature to Wadeye, are borne by this community, an Indigenous community of roughly 2,500 to 3,000 people. They are not in the mainstream eye. There is a lot of criticism made of Indigenous communities across the Northern Territory. But, when people understand the nature of the disadvantage those communities suffer because of their geographic isolation and because of the nature of the road and communications infrastructure that they have until recently had to endure, there should be no doubt where the costs are being borne. It is not unusual—indeed, it is common—for these communities to rely on air charters and helicopters for their services.

As a commitment at the last election, this Labor government resolved to upgrade airstrips and install lighting in a number of communities—at Minjilang, or Croker Island, Robinson River, Nyirripi, Ti Tree, Apatula, Peppimenarti and Milyakburra. This will ensure that people living in these communities in remote parts of Australia will have access to food and other essential services, including medical supplies, mail and personnel like teachers, doctors and nurses.

My time is about up, but there are a number of other areas of infrastructure that need to be contemplated when we are talking about the bush, not the least of which is broadband. I know it is a central feature of our communications policy, and it is important that we contemplate what it means for people who live in the bush. Broadband is essential for local government, small business and individual citizens, regardless of where they live. The absence of effective broadband removes an absolutely vital lifeline—for example, for Defence families who want to keep contact with loved ones who may be on hazardous overseas deployments. It stops families in remote areas from keeping in touch with families in the southern states, and that is a vital element of their wellbeing.

This bill stipulates that Infrastructure Australia will look at economic or physical infrastructure, specifically transport, energy, communications and water infrastructure. This is not to say that things which are commonly classified as social infrastructure—schools, hospitals, libraries, universities—are not to receive attention. Indeed, in the case of my electorate, this government has committed itself to addressing fundamental housing needs in Lingiari as well as additional resources for schooling and health services. As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, these institutions are important foundation blocks of our communities and will be treated as such by this government. I welcome the bill and commend it to the chamber.

Belinda Neal (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the R2937Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008 which is before the chamber today. This is a bill which both meets last year’s election commitment by Kevin Rudd’s team and is consistent with Labor’s tradition of enhancing built and social infrastructure. Nation building is part of the grand Labor tradition and the Labor dream of what a modern Australia should look like. This is the view that working families should be able to rely on a safety net of both built and social infrastructure.

Labor governments’ investment in infrastructure and their involvement in building our nation are longstanding. In fact, Labor was responsible for most of the greatest infrastructure schemes since federation: the Snowy Mountains Hydro Scheme was launched in 1949 by a great Labor icon, Ben Chifley; the Sydney Opera House was launched by Labor Premier Joseph Cahill; and, close to my own electorate, the F3, which runs between Sydney and the Central Coast, was built by a Labor New South Wales government. We also saw the nation-building schemes of the seventies under Gough Whitlam and the great urban investments of the nineties by Minister Brian Howe through the Better Cities program, which saw many urban infrastructure projects, including the backlog, undertaken. This government’s $4.7 billion plan for broadband infrastructure and the extension of optical fibre to the node is in keeping with these principles.

Our Labor government is looking at the long term and building for the future. We want to grow this nation and unstop the bottlenecks which are holding back growth in productivity. At the end of 12 years of the coalition government, the productivity growth of this nation was running at zero per cent, and this was at least partially due to the failure of that government to properly plan the necessary infrastructure to facilitate economic growth. The run-on effect of this failure in our productivity growth is the challenges we are presently facing with inflation, with its own run-on effect on interest rates—such a blight on so many Australian families. Labor has thus taken steps to identify those bottlenecks within its first 100 days of government with the introduction of this bill, the Infrastructure Australia Bill.

The core objective of the bill is to form a committee of 12 members with appropriate experience, to be drawn from the states, the Commonwealth, local government and the private sector, who will determine infrastructure needs Australia-wide and prioritise them. Infrastructure Australia will be supported by the appointment of an Infrastructure Coordinator and a budget of $20 million over four years for its operations.

I am particularly thrilled to see this development because of the needs of the Central Coast. Over the last 30 years we have seen a phenomenal population growth. This area located between Sydney and Newcastle now has a population in excess of 300,000. Each day, some 35,000 workers commute to Sydney, mainly by rail but many also by road. The infrastructure of the Central Coast has not kept pace, and the population expansion has stressed our unique and fragile coastal environment. We on the Central Coast have been largely ignored for the last 12 years, and the decline of our built infrastructure has let down our economy and the many members of the Central Coast community who rely on that infrastructure.

One of the issues that concerned me about the attitude of the previous federal government is that they constantly argued that matters were other people’s responsibility, rather than their own, and that it was the fault of either the state government or the local government that there was such a failure in infrastructure or that many things did not occur that really were required. They refused to take on the leadership role—which is, I believe, a proper role for the federal government—and this led to a lack of prioritisation and to decision making within geographical and legalistic compartments, rather than to a proper assessment of the optimum choices. This bill is a clear rejection of this approach. This is a clear statement by the Kevin Rudd Labor government that it will take up its proper leadership role on infrastructure.

On the Central Coast we have a great need for improvements in both our built and our social infrastructure. The Central Coast has two lifelines running from Sydney on to Newcastle: the first is the F3 Expressway and the second is the railway. The F3 has had many interruptions in recent times, both from bushfires and from accidents. This is being partially remedied at the moment by an expansion of that expressway to six lanes, undertaken at a cost of some $200 million. But I have to say that I was somewhat distressed by the focus solely on roads by the previous member for Robertson, who at the same time was also the Minister for Local Government, Territories and Roads. It is my view that, because of the segmentation of decision making and the division between different governments, proper priority was not given to rail, which I believe really should be the priority for the Central Coast.

In fact, the Central Coast really requires a major expansion of the railway and preferably an additional rail line that does not run along the same route as the present rail line. This need was partially addressed by Martin Ferguson—who is now a minister, but in a separate portfolio—when he announced during the election that about $840 million would be provided for a dedicated freight line between Sydney and Newcastle. The obvious result of that additional infrastructure would be that the many occasions where the passenger line is interrupted because of breakdowns in the freight line would not occur. So we would have a much more efficient freight line but, at the same time, we would also have a much more efficient passenger line, which would run more freely, with fewer interruptions and delays.

I understand from discussions with those involved in transport on the roads that every freight train that travels along that line reduces the number of trucks on the F3 by approximately 80—a phenomenal number—which means, of course, that as well as having the run-on effect of improving our passenger line the new freight line will also reduce the congestion and the accidents on the F3. In fact, it appears that about 80 per cent of the many interruptions on the F3 in recent times are a result of accidents that occur because of incidents involving trucks. So you can see the obvious, logical advantage of having fewer trucks travelling on the F3.

Of course, our infrastructure is not just about transport, though. There are a whole range of other areas where we are failing. I have to say that I have had a huge number of complaints from many of my constituents—both during and after the election—about their incapacity to access some of the basic infrastructure in relation to communications. There are extensive areas in the seat of Robertson and on the Central Coast where people are unable to access something that most people consider absolutely necessary—that is, mobile phone services.

In fact, there have been many people who have made representations to me, from the Spencer area, from Mangrove Mountain and from the other areas in the hinterland, who cannot even access mobile phones to obtain emergency services. This is something that is obviously deeply concerning for them and is also deeply concerning for the people who use those roads. If they do have an accident, they are unable to access emergency services. I spoke to a man who had experienced very difficult circumstances. At about 50—I think this says something about avoiding a midlife crisis—he purchased a motorbike and was travelling on the roads in the hinterland in my electorate. He unfortunately had an accident and had to lie on the road for some time waiting for someone else to come along and find him, because he could not use a mobile phone in order to call emergency services.

What this highlights is that there is a great need in my seat on the Central Coast for improvements in our infrastructure. There is a great need for greater economic activity, and this lack of infrastructure is a bar to it. This bill takes us a long way down the track of properly prioritising and making sure that where infrastructure is needed it is built. I very much endorse this bill and call on the opposition to show statesmanship and support this bill in the interests of the nation.

Debate (on motion by Mr Melham) adjourned.