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

I rise today to support this significant initiative of the Australian government. It is important to Australia in a number of ways. Firstly, the introduction of this bill is evidence that the Rudd Labor government keeps its promises. Secondly, it demonstrates the government’s commitment to ensuring that there is an open and transparent process in place for infrastructure development. Finally, it is the continuation of the great Labor tradition of investing in nation building.

At its first cabinet meeting in Karratha in January of this year, the government discussed the implementation of its election promise to introduce a bill creating Infrastructure Australia. It was decided that the legislation would be introduced into the parliament at the first session. The Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government then introduced the bill on 21 February 2008.

This initiative is one part of the government’s five-point plan to fight inflation. This broad plan to deal with Australia’s inflation problem includes aiming for a target surplus of 1.5 per cent of GDP for the upcoming financial year, looking at options to boost national savings and encourage a national savings culture in Australia, acting decisively and effectively on the national skills crisis, dealing effectively with the challenge of public infrastructure bottlenecks and acting to boost employment participation. It is only by acting decisively that we can deal with our inflation challenge. It will not be easy, but without a clear strategy pointing the way to the future, nothing will be done.

The introduction of Infrastructure Australia is a significant step towards solving some of our most critical infrastructure blockages. This was a promise of Labor during the election campaign and, as with our other promises, action is occurring to ensure its implementation. The minister in his second reading speech noted the Committee of Economic Development of Australia report Growth 54: infrastructure—getting on with the job. That report highlighted their finding:

The backlog of needed infrastructure projects in Australia is estimated at $25 billion worth of projects. With this much-needed investment in place, Australia’s GDP would be 0.8 per cent higher each year. That translates to $6 billion a year—or an average of $300 per Australian.

The report further noted that there are adequate funds available to fix the backlog of projects, but what was lacking was the political will to do so across Commonwealth and state governments. Australia has benefited economically from a sustained period of economic growth. What has been lacking is the infrastructure to support that growth and the opportunities emerging from developing countries.

The CEDA report noted that there are large capital resources accumulating in the private sector. The minister stated in a media conference on 21 January 2008 that there is $1.1 trillion existing in superannuation funds, which people in the superannuation industry are saying is available for investment, preferably in Australia rather than overseas. The CEDA report also commented that there is evidence of a strong linkage between infrastructure investment and economic growth. The report further states:

... investment and infrastructure generates higher returns and investment in other sectors of the economy.

Infrastructure requirements fall into broad categories across the spectrum and include roads, railways, seaports, telecommunications, electricity, water and airports, to name some of the critical needs. A report from the Productivity Commission was released in February 2005. That report was the Review of national competition policy reforms. In chapter 8, the Productivity Commission outlined what it identified as opportunities to improve the efficiency of economic infrastructure through further competition based reforms. The report stated:

... in identifying a reform agenda, the Commission has targeted areas that meet three tests: being inherently national in character; offering the prospect of significant gains; and likely to benefit from a nationally agreed reform framework under the stewardship of COAG or another national leadership body.

The report then continues in chapter 8 to identify key areas where it believes reform could be targeted. These include: the energy sector; the water sector; two aspects of the transport sector, the national freight system and a review of national passenger transport; and reform in the communications sector. In broader terms, the role of Infrastructure Australia will be to develop a strategic blueprint for Australia’s infrastructure needs. This will include an ongoing cooperative process across the Commonwealth, the states and industry to identify and prioritise infrastructure projects.

The first task for the new body will be to conduct an audit of the nation’s infrastructure needs based on that audit. An infrastructure priority list will be established within 12 months for consideration by COAG. The role of Infrastructure Australia will be to provide advice to government through COAG as well as investors and owners of infrastructure. This will include advice on infrastructure priorities, appropriate policy and regulatory reforms, options to address impediments, the needs of users and possible financing mechanisms. The geography and population of Australia require infrastructure solutions that are created from a national perspective. It is vital that infrastructure plans are aligned across the various jurisdictions.

The greatest example of this was of course the Snowy Mountains scheme. The concept for the scheme was launched in 1949 through the cooperation of the Commonwealth, and the New South Wales and Victorian governments. Of course, the scheme was the brainchild of Prime Minister Ben Chifley and it was, apart from the historical nature of the concept, a most courageous decision. The project took 25 years to complete. Apart from the massive contribution to water flows and electricity in this country, the nature of the scheme itself changed the character of Australia.

As I indicated earlier, the Labor Party has a proud history of leadership in the establishment of infrastructure projects in this country. Gough Whitlam has stated publicly on more than one occasion that one of his proudest achievements was the establishment of infrastructure projects across Australia, including sewerage. His initiatives made life so much more liveable for Australians in the newly developing suburbs around Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. Gough realised, as many did not, that, unless the federal government took the lead in these matters, little would happen on the scale which was required nationally. Famously, Neville Wran said of Gough, who accepted the sentiment if not the comparison:

It was said of Caesar Augustus that he found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble ... He found Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth unsewered, and left them fully flushed.

It was the Whitlam government that established the first ministry of urban and regional development dedicated to providing the necessary direction to ensure infrastructure reform at the urban level. The minister Tom Uren established the Australian Heritage Commission and the subsequent compilation of the Register of the National Estate. He promoted the restoration and re-use of derelict inner city areas such as the Glebe estate and Woolloomooloo in Sydney, and the reclamation of Duck Creek and the creation of the Chipping Norton Lakes scheme. Tom Uren established the creation of the land commissions to ensure availability of reasonably priced housing blocks and the development of new planned communities. Later Labor governments under Prime Ministers Hawke and Keating opened up the economy, which made us more competitive as a nation.

Under Prime Minister Keating the Better Cities Program was introduced by Brian Howe. This was a broad reform strategy that included innovative housing and it focused on urban consolidation. The genesis of the program was at a premier’s conference in 1991 where the Commonwealth, state and territory governments agreed to work together on urban consolidation and renewal through practical measures and coordination across governments. Better Cities forged strong, cooperative relationships with the states. Better Cities and even the former Department of Urban and Regional Development were well suited to their time, but that does not mean that they are suitable solutions for tackling today’s urban problems or the ones looming on the horizon.

I cite this initiative as an example of how governments can and have taken the lead in resolving issues of national importance. As a nation, we are very highly urbanised. We need healthy, vibrant communities with appropriate levels of infrastructure to support those communities. Our capital and regional cities are suffering a complex set of stresses. Urban sprawl as people move further and further from city centres is causing increased travelling times, more pollution and greater reliance on the car. At the same time congestion has become more common in the older and inner suburbs as residential densities increase. Our capital cities have become sprawling residential corridors. Population growth from immigration has exacerbated this trend, particularly for Sydney. It is also evidenced in our coastal cities, and more and more Australians are seeking to escape the stresses of capital city living.

The traditional design and development of cities around a CBD is no longer able to support the diverse needs of today’s community. Household size, work, education and recreation patterns have changed. In addition, much of the infrastructure in our cities was built for different levels of development and not in anticipation of the demands of today. Our increasing consumption of energy, water and telecommunications is placing new demands on our cities, but planning systems are not responding to these trends or showing any understanding of the impacts on people’s lives and communities. Over 87 per cent of Australians live in urban areas. This means that the shape of our urban environment is critical to the daily lives and wellbeing of most Australians. Urban development directly impacts on where we live, where we work and play, where our children go to school, university and TAFE, the transport systems we use, how we access medical, dental and other services and the quality of our air, water and landscape.

Cities that were designed to meet 19th century requirements do not meet the needs of the 21st century. We need roads and public transport to allow the community to easily access work, services and education while minimising our carbon footprint. Access to these facilities is an issue of equity. We must ensure that urban infrastructure will allow the community access to work or services that do not require travel two hours each way, each day. I note, for example, the new M7 in Sydney’s west. The M7 has cut out about 55 sets of traffic lights and does provide easier access for many people in Western Sydney. It also assists truck drivers who want to avoid driving into Sydney itself. They are now able to drive around Sydney and keep to their schedule.

We need new, fresh ideas for infrastructure development in this country. In the same way that previous Labor governments introduced new ideas for infrastructure reform, this government is prepared to take the lead in the 21st century. I hear the negative comments made by the other side in response to the Prime Minister’s 2020 initiative. One of the differences of this government from the previous government is that we do not believe that we have a monopoly on ideas for the future. The Australia 2020 Summit is about the community coming up with ideas to take this country into the future. We require down-to-earth, practical proposals to implement a new vision for a sustainable future. The bill before the House does just that. It proposes realistic solutions to problems facing Australia. The vital role to be performed by Infrastructure Australia will be to provide a strategic blueprint, and this blueprint will allow us, as a nation, to prepare for future challenges like urban congestion, climate change and population demands. It will also drive reform on how to maximise the infrastructure we already have. I commend the bill to the House.

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to talk about infrastructure, an issue not only close to my heart and close to the people that I represent in the beautiful region of Groom but also close to the hearts of all Australians. When we talk about infrastructure, we talk about issues in relation to not only motor vehicles but also transport of heavy goods and produce both to and from regional areas. My electorate has one of the busiest freight corridors in Australia. In fact, any truck travelling to western or central western Queensland, to the Northern Territory or to northern or north-western New South Wales travels through the main street of my city. That is an issue I will come back to later.

It is essential to provide substantial funding for infrastructure projects. Whilst the Labor Party are currently dishonestly claiming that the Howard government failed to spend adequately on infrastructure, particularly on roads, they are themselves preparing to spend less than half of what we had planned to spend. My understanding is that during the election campaign the Labor Party promised a figure somewhere south of $15.5 billion for roads and infrastructure. Of course, they have already made an abominable decision in relation to Ipswich Road—a road which I travel on frequently. I suggest to the member for Banks that he takes the opportunity to travel on that road sometime between seven and nine o’clock in the morning. If he misses that time, due to the fact that he needs to travel up to Queensland, then he should travel on that road anytime after 3.30 in the afternoon until six o’clock. It is basically a car park.

This highly political decision of the Rudd Labor government to circumvent what has been a detailed investigation of that road can only leave the problems that we see now as problems of the future. In fact, the Labor government’s decision to extend that road by only two lanes will see the people of Ipswich, people who have already faced major traffic delays during peak hours, continue to see delays. The six-lane proposal will be at capacity by the time it is completed. As part of our nearly $30 billion commitment to the people of Australia in AusLink 2, we would have solved that problem with, firstly, a four-lane highway bypassing Ipswich Road followed, in one order or another, by the expansion of Ipswich Road to six lanes and the further expansion of the bypass to eight lanes, thus giving the people of Ipswich, Darling Downs and Warwick a 14-lane alternative to what the Labor Party is currently proposing. These sorts of short-sighted infrastructure decisions heavily weighted by political expediency would be avoided were Infrastructure Australia to do its job.

What we are seeing with this organisation in the first instance is, of course, another review. As we have seen from the Labor Party, anytime a decision needs to be made, the first thing they do is have a review. The second thing they do is review that review—and we assume that comes after the review—and decide as a government whether they accept the outcome of the review. It is essential for Australia’s future economic growth and for the curtailing of inflation, which we hear so much about from the Treasurer—he does not seem to understand completely what is going on—that there be no delay on infrastructure investment in Australia and that when we do see investment in infrastructure it does not become bogged down in layers of bureaucracy. Infrastructure needs to be built in Australia; no-one would argue with that. We do not want it to be a lucky dip of projects that may or may not proceed, as we have seen already with Ipswich Road. We need to see a process where state and federal governments and a combination of communities make soundly based decisions. I do not know how this infrastructure committee is going to work. I guess that highlights my trepidation. But what I do know is that already, before we have even seen the committee formed in its final format, we have seen political decisions made and people in regional Australia, in this case regional Queensland, being asked to pay the price of that.

The Labor Party says that this legislation, the Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008, is a significant step in moving forward with infrastructure development in Australia et cetera, ad nauseam while, as I said, trying to suggest, by using some dodgy figures put together before AusLink 1 became fully operational, that we as a government underspent on infrastructure and they as a government are going to spend significantly more. In fact, as I have suggested already, we were planning to spend over $29 billion, taking into account the $22-and-a-bit billion that was announced in last year’s May budget and the further $7 billion in additional funding that we outlined during the election campaign—all fully costed by Treasury. So there you have nearly $30 billion in AusLink alone compared with Labor’s suggested promise of $15.5 billion. We need to have some rationale brought to this whole area. We need to see the sorts of things that we did with AusLink, where we systematically worked through infrastructure needs to ensure there was connection, in both an economic and a community sense, between those areas in Australia that needed better roads.

I mentioned in my opening comments some of the issues that Toowoomba is facing with its second range crossing. The idea of this crossing has been around for a long time and it was one of my goals as the member for Groom, which includes Toowoomba and the Darling Downs, to ensure that that crossing was built. Yet, after successfully ensuring that some $40 million was spent on both land acquisitions and some geological work, including the drilling of a pilot tunnel, and the promise by the then Howard government that it would spend $700 million during AusLink 2 and complete the project in the following AusLink program, we have seen this project completely ignored by the Rudd Labor government. This is a second example of a poor decision-making process by a government which claims that it will ensure that infrastructure is built in Australia in a timely way.

Both the people of Ipswich, now represented by Labor members, and the people of Toowoomba and the Darling Downs could well wonder what they are going to get out of this infrastructure proposal. In fact, they could also wonder whether or not there will be anything of any substance delivered to the regional areas. This case is in Queensland, but the same issue can be raised in virtually every part of Australia.

We do not want to see the Labor government introduce a system which in some way relieves the state Labor governments, which have made a complete mess of infrastructure funding, of their responsibilities in this area. We do not want to see a ‘get out of jail free’ card given to state governments which have continually made abominable decisions in relation to infrastructure and which, unless they are brought into line, will continue to ignore the infrastructure needs, particularly in the resource sector. There is no better example of that than the problems in coal transportation in Queensland. A government owned corporation in the form of Queensland Rail is severely undercapitalised by the treasury of that state, unable to run trains effectively and handicapped, I know, by a historical decision to run a three feet six inch gauge. At the same time, it is much more handicapped by the fact that it is unable to make the investments to triplicate range crossings to get access and it is unable to make the proper investment in locos and carriages in one of the booming industries in Australia—the coal industry. It is an industry which I know the Labor Party has its reservations about, but it is one which the coalition supports absolutely. It is an industry which currently finds itself hogtied by a state Labor government unable to spend the sort of capital we need it to spend.

In establishing this bill, we would hope that the Labor Party actually places some focus and sincerity on this issue and moves away from the political decision making which is such a hallmark of state Labor governments and, as we have seen already, of this Rudd Labor government. We need to see the infrastructure investment in Australia made on the basis that it is actually going to deliver outcomes. We do not need another review. We do not need governments to press the pause button and decide whether or not they are going to build things that have been plainly obvious in their requirement. We do not need to see the people of Toowoomba subjected to another 10-year wait to know whether or not they will get a range crossing which will take B-double vehicles out of the main street of Toowoomba and away from their homes, schools and shops and ensure that Toowoomba is treated in the same way as every other major city in Australia.

What we want to see from this new body that is being established under this proposed act is a systematic program to ensure that people in Toowoomba, people in Ipswich, people in Sydney, people in western New South Wales and people in every part of Australia will in fact be able to have some certainty that they will get the infrastructure that they need while at the same time the companies that invest billions and billions of dollars in resource projects in Australia will have the opportunity and certainty that their product will be able to be exported. If this is just another layer of bureaucracy, so there will be another layer of delay in the operation of the building of infrastructure in Australia, then Australia will pay an economic penalty that will last not for decades but in fact for tens of decades. I share the concerns expressed by the shadow minister for infrastructure, transport and local government when this bill was first admitted to the House. I have concerns that the Labor Party has no understanding of the needs of people in regional areas. I hope that, as we progress through this government’s actions, the sorts of dreadful decisions that we have seen made about Ipswich Road and the Toowoomba range crossing will not be replicated by this new body.

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008, which marks the delivery of another commitment of the Rudd government. This is the commitment to establish the Infrastructure Australia body, a central part of the government’s plan to combat inflation. It is an urgent task, and this government has wasted no time in getting on with it.

Well-planned infrastructure provides the basis for economic activity in our nation. I am talking about transport infrastructure and about energy and water infrastructure, which is needed to meet the challenge of climate change and to meet the reality of our mostly dry and mostly brown land. I am talking about communications infrastructure, which the government is meeting the need for with the national broadband network. I am talking about social infrastructure in the form of schools and hospitals. We need to recognise that because of the scale of our country, the sheer size of Australia, we are particularly dependent on efficient infrastructure utilisation.

Boosting productivity growth is vital to sustained economic prosperity. Infrastructure planning and development, which is what this legislation is concerned with, will facilitate increased productivity growth. Under the previous government Australia’s productivity growth has been allowed to dribble away to virtually nothing. We have gone from leading the industrialised nations of the world to trailing those industrialised nations. Reducing supply-side pressures in our economy by dealing with the lack of capacity will help bring down inflation and should apply downward pressure on interest rates. Infrastructure gaps are costing us 0.8 of a per cent of GDP in lost production every year.

Infrastructure is not simply about the economic dividends to communities and the nation. It is also about the lifestyle and the standard of living which we enjoy. It is about things like the ability of schools to educate our children and the ability of hospitals to care for the ill. There is also a point to be made that infrastructure markets are not like other markets. They are often monopolistic or semimonopolistic in nature, subject to regulatory control of pricing, and they are often publicly funded, bringing with that competing demands on government financing. Determining access and exclusive rights to infrastructure often creates uncertainty about the returns that will be generated and thus about the financing and construction. Given the importance of infrastructure development to Australia, we require national leadership to make up for what have been decades of underinvestment. Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, the industry body, has recognised this, the current government has recognised this, and you might well ask why the previous government did not recognise this.

In my electorate of Isaacs, both economic and social infrastructure will play important roles in the future economic wellbeing of local communities. There is a need for social infrastructure and a need, for local business in particular, for a highly skilled workforce, which is another key plank of Labor’s plan to fight inflation. There is a need in my electorate for physical infrastructure. The manufacturing sectors that operate in the two areas of Dandenong and Braeside need to be connected to fully functioning ports and airports and to other elements of their supply chain. With the skill shortage and heavy competition for skilled labour, there is also a need to ensure that skills are in fact being provided and skilled workers are becoming available. On the infrastructure of technology, it is no longer possible for businesses operating in a globalised economy to survive, let alone thrive, without being able to access broadband and other technologies which they need. So, too, for energy and water infrastructure: there is a need for businesses to have guaranteed supplies of energy and water with appropriate pricing.

This government is responding to infrastructure shortfalls by taking proactive steps, by establishing Infrastructure Australia and by appointing the first ever minister for infrastructure. The bill is going to create Infrastructure Australia, an advisory council, along with the Office of Infrastructure Coordination to support their work. It will have 12 members: five from the private sector including the chair, three from the federal government, three from state government and one from local government. I should congratulate Sir Rod Eddington on his announced appointment, Sir Rod having had a distinguished career including five years as the CEO of British Airways. Most importantly, this legislation will charge Infrastructure Australia with the role of auditing our current infrastructure needs and making recommendations to all levels of government and to the private sector. Its first task will be to complete an audit by the end of the year and to deliver to COAG a national infrastructure priority list by March 2009. This national coordination will help to overcome problems in infrastructure development and thus boost productivity and national competitiveness. It will apply downward pressure on inflation. With Infrastructure Australia there will be a coordinated national approach to assessing and fixing national infrastructure gaps and bottlenecks in our productive capacity.

Madam Deputy Speaker, the bill, as you have heard from other speakers, continues Labor’s tradition of nation building. It is well recognised that the Australian Labor Party has been the party that has genuinely believed in and has acted on the importance of the Commonwealth government and the use of its powers to build a unified nation. One can look at the examples of the Chifley government in relation to the Snowy Mountains scheme, the achievements of the Whitlam government in relation to urban and regional development and, more recently, the work of the Hawke and Keating governments on the standardisation of rail gauges or the Better Cities Program, which was focused on our urban infrastructure. By contrast, the Liberal Party has shifted from its longstanding support for what you could only call a parochial federalism to more recently—in its last 12 years of government, which we have just endured—the use of Commonwealth powers for partisan political gain. Neither philosophy represents a vision for the future of our nation.

The member for Shortland earlier commented on the report The great freight task delivered by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Transport and Regional Services. That is a report in which the committee, to its credit, identified a range of projects that are needed to allow our ports to function at capacity. I draw the attention of members to this to make the point that such a task should not have been left to a parliamentary committee to perform on an ad hoc basis; it is something that should have been dealt with in a coordinated way on a national basis. That report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Transport and Regional Services alone serves as a stark reminder of the failure of the former government in this area of infrastructure and nation building. This task of audit and of considering what projects are required will be a key role of Infrastructure Australia.

Australia is now ranked 20th out of 25 OECD countries for investment in public infrastructure as a percentage of GDP, and the reason why Australia occupies that lowly ranking among the developed countries of the world is that the former government was simply not interested in providing leadership or the investment that infrastructure required. The former government believed that planning for Australia’s economic future involved an ideological war against trade unions, rather than thinking about the actual needs of our country as we go forward into the 21st century.

The Auditor-General’s report, which we have heard quite a bit about in recent months—that is, the Auditor-General’s report on the Regional Partnerships program—showed that it was not merely neglect on the part of the former government in relation to infrastructure; there was a shameless, systematic rorting of infrastructure spending for short-term political gain. What we had were decisions about infrastructure that were based on the margin in particular seats rather than on national need. In future, decisions about infrastructure are going to be based on demonstrable need and not on pork-barrelling. The result of all this—

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, the Service Economy and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Ciobo interjecting

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Moncrieff will get his turn in a minute, thank you.

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He is itching to go, Madam Deputy Speaker. The result of all of this shameful neglect of infrastructure planning, shameful neglect of infrastructure spending and rampant pork-barrelling where there was some infrastructure spending—

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I seek to intervene.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Will the member for Isaacs allow a question? I will explain to the member for Isaacs, who as a new member probably does not realise that in the Main Committee interventions are allowed and the member is allowed to either accept or reject the question. Will the member for Isaacs accept the question from the member for Tangney?

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I will reject the question. It is unlikely to have been a good one! The result of all this was the coalition government’s farewell gift to our nation: its underinvestment in infrastructure and, just to remind honourable members, the highest inflation rate in 16 years.

The approach of the former government to infrastructure planning and infrastructure investment is no longer good enough. By contrast, we in the Labor Party take seriously our tradition of nation building, and that is why the Rudd government has acted on the commitment to introduce Infrastructure Australia. This government is showing leadership. This government will help to clear the infrastructure bottlenecks that have been created by 12 years of neglect. It is an urgent task, one on which we require coordinated national leadership. That is what is now going to be provided. The Infrastructure Australia Bill, through its creation of Infrastructure Australia and the tasks that it sets for this new body, creates the structure for that national leadership.

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, the Service Economy and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, you keenly observed my great enthusiasm to contribute to this debate, and I am very pleased to have the opportunity now to speak to the Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008, because this bill is so symbolic of the Australian Labor Party. In so many respects, this bill really is the epitome of the Australian Labor Party, because it is a bill that seems on the surface to present so much and to herald so much about what the Australian Labor Party has in store now that it is the government.

Once you start to pierce through the spin, the lack of substance, the grand rhetorical statements and the various historical blurrings and inaccuracies that come from members opposite, you start to realise that this bill, like so much of the new Rudd Labor government’s agenda, is completely and utterly without substance. This bill is without substance because it sees the creation of Infrastructure Australia, a new bureaucracy that the Rudd Labor government says is going to deliver in spades. It begs the very question. Labor has been in power across every state and territory in Australia now for at least a decade and, in just about every respect, we have seen state Labor governments fail on all fronts. It is a big F for fail for the Queensland, New South Wales, South Australian, Western Australian, Victorian, Tasmanian, Northern Territory and ACT Labor governments. The reason they all fail is that every Labor government is big on spin but very poor when it comes to actual delivery of services.

I will talk about a jurisdiction that I know well, Queensland, and the fact that the Australian Labor Party has been in power in Queensland for 18 of the last 20 years—years where we have seen next to nothing when it comes to infrastructure leadership by the state Labor government. So, when members opposite stand up in this chamber and wax lyrical about the importance of investing in infrastructure, you actually know that it is just spin, it is just rhetoric and there is no actual delivery. If there were delivery at a state level, there would not be 40 ships sitting off the port of Dalrymple waiting to be loaded. If there were delivery, the former coalition government would not have been required to invest a record amount of money to make up for state government inaction. The fact is that the Labor Party is big on talk but absolutely weak when it comes to doing anything. This bill, I predict, will be symbolic of the entire Rudd Labor government, where we will see all sorts of promises being heralded—the same sorts of promises that we saw prior to the election when the now Prime Minister stood up and said, ‘Under the Labor Party, fuel prices will go down.’ This is the same Prime Minister who said, ‘Under the Labor Party, grocery prices will go down.’ In the same way, the Rudd Labor government says, ‘Elect us, and we will make sure that we see investment in infrastructure and the creation of Infrastructure Australia’—the new body that is going to mastermind all of this.

Let us consider what members of the government have said previously in this debate. In particular, we heard the speaker previous to me talk about how one of the key achievements of the Infrastructure Australia Bill will be the creation of an audit of infrastructure needs in Australia as if it is a new thing, as if in some way the audit of infrastructure needs in Australia will present a new change in Australia. I have news for the previous speaker: there has been an audit done at a state level already, and it has not heralded anything. Perhaps the previous speaker could explain to me why it is that in a city like the Gold Coast—the fastest-growing region in Australia and Australia’s sixth largest city—the Beattie Labor government, and now the Bligh Labor government, have done basically nothing for our city for a decade. Perhaps that could be explained by the previous Labor speaker. Perhaps the previous Labor speaker could explain why the Queensland government, like every other state Labor government with the exception of Western Australia, is now running budget deficits to the tune of $80 billion—debt at a state level brought on by the Labor Party putting upward pressure on inflation. I take objection to members opposite lecturing the coalition on inflation when $80 billion of debt is driven by them at a state level.

I take objection to the Labor Party lecturing the coalition about how hard it is to deal with Australia’s economy, referred to as the ‘miracle economy’ by the Economist magazine. When we lost office, we left the Labor Party with a $17 billion surplus and a 30-year low in unemployment. That is the record of the former government. The fact is that the former government invested $15.8 billion in infrastructure and a further $22.3 billion in infrastructure under the AusLink program. I noticed the previous Labor speaker never once mentioned AusLink. He probably does not even know about it and probably has not even heard of AusLink, even though it was the biggest item of expenditure on infrastructure by the coalition government. The new Labor government have to pull up their socks to match the track record of the former government when it comes to investment in infrastructure.

The new Labor government should certainly not be copying their state Labor mates. If you are copying your state Labor mates, I can assure members opposite that what we will see is disinvestment in infrastructure, and we will see the Labor Party turn their back on much-needed investment in roads, airports, ports and rail. That is the legacy of state Labor governments.

I will pick up one other point that the previous speaker raised: the need for access to water infrastructure. Let me invite members opposite to come to the Gold Coast and south-east Queensland. Please come up, and I will explain the problems faced by a population of several million. The Labor Party has been in power for 18 of the last 20 years, and the Queensland population in south-east Queensland has nearly doubled, and they have not built one dam—not one dam in south-east Queensland in nearly 20 years. The biggest single piece of infrastructure out of the last 20 years was done in the two years the coalition was in power—$1 billion for the M1 between Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

I say to the Labor Party: no-one takes seriously their talk. No-one takes seriously Labor Party promises, Labor Party hot air and Labor Party rhetoric about all the virtues that will flow from the Infrastructure Australia Bill—how there will be an audit of Labor’s record when it comes to the need to invest in infrastructure and how the Labor Party is shackled with such a bad economy. No-one takes it seriously, because it is without substance, just like the Labor Party when it comes to actual infrastructure investment. If we had seen at a state level the Labor Party actually doing something then we might take seriously their desire to fix the Australian economy and to fix these infrastructure bottlenecks.

I also noted the previous speakers talking about the skills shortage in Australia. How often do we hear that? A skills shortage actually should be referred to as a ‘labour force shortage’. It is what happens when unemployment gets down to four per cent. It is in stark contrast to having a million people unemployed and 11 per cent unemployment, which was the last record of the Labor Party. ‘Skills crisis’ is not the correct phrase. The correct phrase is ‘labour force shortage’, and that is what happens when you have four per cent unemployment.

More importantly, if we want to take seriously for a moment the notion that perhaps the Labor Party are onto something when they say that there is a skills shortage, I would love to have an explanation as to why there has been next to no investment in the TAFE system by state Labor governments. In the primary area of responsibility for state Labor, vocational education and training, we have seen F for fail time and time again by every state and territory Labor government. That is the track record of the Labor Party.

We heard them during the election when they stood up and said: ‘We’re not interested in the blame game. It’s time we stopped the blame game.’ I have got some news again for the new members of the Rudd Labor government. You are going to hear a lot about the blame game from this opposition, and you are going to hear a lot because at your feet lies a decade of inaction. At the feet of the Labor Party lies the fact that state Labor governments, that are meant to invest in infrastructure and in vocational education, have done nothing.

The consequence of state Labor governments investing money, as they call it, has been bloated bureaucracies. That is the primary investment by state Labor governments. It was fascinating to see just recently that in Queensland the Bligh-Beattie Labor government has increased the bureaucracy by over 30 per cent. That is the track record—a 30 per cent increase in the bureaucracy. There is a proud boast for state Labor governments! There is much-needed infrastructure! Do not invest in new hospitals; make sure you put it into extra bureaucrats in George Street. That will make all the difference for my constituents in Moncrieff!

I must give some credit to the state Labor government. They went out and announced that there would be a new hospital for the Gold Coast. That was great, because the Gold Coast is now nearing 600,000 people, and the last time we had a new hospital the population was probably sitting at around 70,000 people. So it is about time we got a new hospital from the Queensland state Labor government. They promised that the construction would commence in March 2007, so in March 2007 I went to the sign for this new, you-beaut hospital. There, proudly erected on the site, was the sign for the new Gold Coast hospital—some much needed infrastructure. I am sure it is the kind of infrastructure that the Infrastructure Australia Committee will be looking at and recommending. The Queensland health minister and the Queensland Premier spoke proudly about how they would be doing this.

But it is with regret that I remind all my constituents that we are still waiting for a single sod to be turned. In fact, the Queensland Labor government is now saying to Gold Coasters, ‘Just put that on hold; we might actually change the site of the hospital.’ So here we are, 12 months—almost to the day—after the construction of the hospital was meant to have commenced, 12 months after they were meant to start knocking over trees and building the new hospital, and still nothing. I would have thought that there would be buildings in existence and perhaps the opportunity for Gold Coasters to get access to some first-class hospital service. Not a single tree has been knocked over, although there has been one development on the site—they took away the sign. That is the development by the Queensland Labor government—they took away the sign. That is the extent to which the Queensland Labor government believe in supporting infrastructure needs on the Gold Coast.

So I say to the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, and I am hoping it occupies a lot of his time: let us get serious about putting a bit of pressure on your state Labor mates to get some action. Let us start to see some action when it comes to the words of the Labor Party on the need for new infrastructure. If there is a city that is crying out for investment and infrastructure, it is the Gold Coast. It is the fastest-growing city in the country—it is Australia’s sixth biggest city now—and we need roads. We need investment in public transport, water, health and schools. If you believe the promises made during the election campaign, each of these areas will be solved by the Australian Labor Party.

I look forward to seeing what this 12-month audit is going to present. I predict it will not be a lot, because these audits already exist at a state level and they do not seem to mean anything. Apparently now at the federal level this new committee—we know the Rudd Labor government is very fond of committees—are going to do their audit, and all of a sudden these problems will be solved. I look forward to seeing announcements by the Rudd Labor government on the kinds of projects that will be rolled out in Moncrieff, McPherson, Forde and Fadden because that is what the Labor Party said would happen in Australia’s fastest-growing city. They can start by putting some pressure on the state Labor government.

The final story I would like to talk about is my profound disappointment again with the Queensland Labor government. Let us give some history to this debate. The coalition announced $455 million to wind the M1 motorway between Nerang and Tugun—a vital arterial road for our region that connects Brisbane to Sydney. Unfortunately, at the moment it is also used by a lot of local commuter traffic on the Gold Coast—not by the interstate traffic that it was designed for. In part, the reason for this is that the Labor Party at the state level have not invested in the side arterial roads that local traffic is meant to use. Instead, they have been happy to see that traffic move onto the M1. So the coalition announced $455 million to expand the M1. This is an important announcement and a big win, dare I say it, for the member for McPherson, the newly elected member for Fadden and me. It was a big win because the Queensland government said that if the coalition provided $427 million they would commence the project immediately.

So they asked for $427 million; the Howard government provided $455 million. But what I find extraordinary—and I remind the people in suburbs like Boonooroo Park, Nerang, Worongary, Robina and Mudgeeraba—is that we provided $455 million even though $427 million was the requested figure and now the Queensland Labor government says that the vast bulk of that money is going to be used on winding the M1 in Logan—not on the Gold Coast. That money is being misappropriated—and I use that word very deliberately—from an important project that we provided the funding for to be used up in Logan in the southern outskirts of Brisbane. Again, I say to the infrastructure minister, if you want to use some pressure let us see you apply some pressure to your state Labor mates and get this road built where we said the funding was meant to go, where constituents in my electorate expected the funding to go and where Gold Coasters rightfully have an expectation that this money will be used to fix this road. We can have the audits, we can have all sorts of claims from the state Labor government about the Infrastructure Australia Bill, but if you do not actually deliver local projects like this then it will be absolutely meaningless and not worth the paper it is written on.

I will leave my remarks on the Infrastructure Australia Bill at that. I came into this debate wanting to accept the good intentions of the infrastructure minister, wanting to believe the claims that have been made by members opposite, wanting to believe that this bill will herald a new day in Australian infrastructure needs. For far too long—for nearly a decade—we have seen next to no action on infrastructure by state Labor governments. The Rudd Labor government now have the chance to demonstrate in a very material sense that they will actually improve the lot of ordinary Australians, that they will stand by their promises and ensure that there is investment in infrastructure to improve the lifestyle and the public amenity of all the cities and regions in Australia. But if it is just hot air, if we just see that the track record is the same as it has been in every Labor state and territory, then this bill will not be worth the paper it is written on—and that is my fear. I hope to stand here in 12 months and be proven wrong by the new Rudd Labor government, but again I make a very conservative suggestion: I will not be. I suggest that in 12 months time the Rudd Labor government will be coming up with all sorts of excuses as to why nothing has happened, we will see this new spirit of federalism in existence and we will wonder why the Rudd Labor government has not been able to achieve much at all. There are a few key measures: let us see if the Gold Coast hospital is built, let us see if the M1 is widened and let us make sure that we have new water infrastructure, new education infrastructure and better roads on the Gold Coast. Those are the KPIs that will be asked of the infrastructure minister. That is the kind of investment I will be looking for. Anything less than that will be another F for fail by the Labor Party.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Moncrieff for his contribution but remind him that this is a very small chamber and he already has a very loud voice. My hearing is very good—but I am not sure it is that good after that! For future reference: I do not think we need to shout in this chamber.

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, the Service Economy and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was projecting.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You were very animated. I would remind everybody that being animated up here can cause grievous bodily harm to the occupier of the chair. I call the member for Forde.

Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is certainly interesting to hear the member for Moncrieff, because the seat of Moncrieff is very close to my seat of Forde, and I am just wondering whether we are actually reading the same messages or understanding the same concepts or issues. It is also interesting to note that the seat of Moncrieff is probably around 100 square kilometres in area. I am in a seat of 3,100 square kilometres in area, which was served very well by a former Liberal member, Kay Elson, but the reality—

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It would only be a horse paddock out my way!

Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That may be right. The reality is it could well be a horse paddock. The Gold Coast members are very Gold Coast-centric, and I am not sure that in the time the previous speaker was in government he had much experience over the ridge from the Gold Coast hinterland, which is essentially the seat of Forde. Infrastructure-wise, we have nothing. The Gold Coast certainly is an area of huge growth. We know that. But to say the Gold Coast is the fastest growing city in Australia is not quite correct—and we will prove that on another day and with other figures. The reality is that, yes, infrastructure is poor in Queensland, but that is not essentially because of the Queensland government. In many areas of their delivery of services the Queensland government have been somewhat short-changed by the federal government, whether we are talking about health, roads, training or any area.

I have not come to this chamber today to talk about what should have happened. Essentially, I think the opposition’s problem is that they have got themselves into that cycle of blame. They said that they were not going to blame; now they are going to blame—they are going to be here in 12 months time telling us what we have not done. My plea to members on the other side, certainly to those who are my neighbouring members in the Gold Coast seats, is to realise that this is about working together. The whole idea of the Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008 is to get all levels of government and all stakeholders working together.

In my maiden speech on 19 February I spoke in some detail about the issues that affect the community in the electorate of Forde. My catchcry then was to ‘put Forde on the map’ in terms of ensuring that the government and the parliament knew more about the opportunities and the potential of the region I represent. The practical application of this intent can be well explained by the opportunities presented in this Infrastructure Australia Bill. In my first speech on 19 February, I highlighted issues related to local demand in Forde for development land for urban and associated industrial purposes. I also made the point that appropriate planning was necessary to ensure that desired environmental and social outcomes would have a positive effect on the region. Having gained experience in planning and regional development activities, I must say that one thing governments, both local and state, tend to do tirelessly is plan. That is something they do do: they plan well. But the success of any planning activity should be measured in a number of ways, and that is why I take point against the member for Moncrieff. It is not about just putting out the challenge to provide infrastructure, whoever is responsible; it is actually about finding solutions. My understanding, coming into this House—or in any house of parliament in this country—is that it is about helping and working with stakeholders to find solutions.

While sustainability is often mentioned, it is not often explained. It includes the essential considerations of environmental, economic and social impact. Sustainability is also about the planning regime in which it is determined. At any given point in time the viability of managed growth is relative to the time frame in which it occurs, and the situation confronting both government and the private sector is the timeliness of planning processes and planning approvals. Stakeholders, both private sector and government, involved in regional development understand the increased costs incurred by any delays in the accepted time frames. And, of course, while we go on arguing about what we should or should not do, or what has happened in the past, it costs those developers—those who are holding land on the ground, those who are waiting for approvals, those who are waiting for commitments from all levels—money, and essentially that is carried on and passed on into those development costs. While the immediate effects of time delays are financial, the added costs incurred then impact on the ability to achieve the desired outcomes proposed by the sustainable aspects of the development. Tardy sequencing of land releases is due to many factors and quite often based around who or what authority is responsible for making the decision.

It is not a criticism of state or local governments but the reality of development in this country, and that is why this bill in its intent will provide the features of facilitation—to not only prioritise the necessary infrastructure by that process but to ensure that there is a coordinated and definitive process to achieve preferred outcomes. As I said, it is about everyone working together.

Within my electorate, there is major investment by the private sector in the industrial areas of Yatala and Bromelton, cited as being the largest future industrial centres in Australia, as well as in the planned lifestyle communities to house the tens of thousands of workers who will relocate to the region over the next 20 to 30 years, with the future residential communities of Greater Flagstone and Yarrabilba already planned, including the provision of affordable housing designs which would help ease our housing crisis in south-east Queensland. They include the necessary infrastructure, not funded by the taxpayers but by an agreed commitment from the project proponents.

This is a good example of private investment, but at this point in time it is delayed, not by the investors but simply because planning decisions will not be made by local and state authorities. These decisions will not be made because the agencies involved are fearful that they will be held responsible for infrastructure yet to be scoped. In other words, due to the uncertainty of local authorities and some planning authorities, they will not make a commitment for fear that they as a local or state authority might bear the costs of providing unknown infrastructure.

The commitment I am talking about is a simple agreement to determine road and transport corridors or to allow the commencement of operational work. As I have said, this is not a criticism of local or state authorities but an understanding that there is no coordination of the necessary processes to ensure development occurs in a timely and efficient manner. This bill proposing the establishment of Infrastructure Australia provides relief to those authorities feeling the strain of making a commitment that they may deliver and then have a funding liability for the provision of some infrastructure not previously identified.

As I said in my opening statement, putting my electorate of Forde on the map is in recognition of the need for government to be aware of the needs of a community so they can be better met. Through this bill, other high-priority electorates in this country can also have their infrastructure demands identified and prioritised. The electorate of Forde, which is at its northern boundary less than 20 minutes by the M1 to the CBD of Brisbane and at its southernmost point, at the border ranges, more than an hour and a half from the CBD, would still be considered by many of my regional parliamentary colleagues as almost a city; yet the townships of Logan Village, Jimboomba and Beaudesert to the south have poor road infrastructure, no rail or regular bus services and, in some of these areas, no provision of town water. In fact, these towns are among a few high-population towns in south-east Queensland, just outside of Brisbane, that do not have a four-lane highway, a train service or regular bus services.

The member for Moncrieff stated that in his view the Gold Coast is underresourced. He needs to come over the range and travel only 50 kilometres to find what real lack of services is all about. Added to the lack of work opportunities in these communities, many of these townships are dormitory suburbs for the commercial and industrial areas of Logan and Brisbane. The requirement for mass travel by single drivers every day along an inadequate highway is just not tenable, safe or efficient. Infrastructure Australia can be seen as the apex of a triangle—a single agency capable of not only facilitating and prioritising the delivery of hard physical infrastructure but also influencing the other benefits that flow from this kind of investment.

Again, in Forde the two major issues that affect our daily lifestyle are housing availability and affordability and then transport on top of that. Currently in the electorate we have groups meeting to discuss any type of solution to providing better options for those who need to traverse for work, for study or for access to the medical and other community services of the region. This can be better described simply as mobility. With adequate road and rail infrastructure, the efforts of community groups and organisations to garner state government support is all the more difficult, and I have committed to working with all agencies to try and secure future commitments. On that note, I would like to commend Sharon Redmond and Lyn Bartimote for their longstanding and continuing efforts to find solutions for their communities of Jimboomba and Beaudesert, particularly in the areas of transport and mobility for the many residents who are denied these simple services.

While local residents are simply trying to achieve services that most other electorates take for granted, there is a wider requirement to understand the strategic position my electorate has in relation to the whole region. In the House this week the member for Page spoke about the region of northern New South Wales and the lack of infrastructure for transport services. The seat of Page, just over the border in New South Wales, is strategically placed and has links to the electorate of Forde in the south west. We have a unique opportunity in this part of the country to link major potential transport corridors, yet there is not one government agency that fully understands the multiple parts of the puzzle and the linkages that could open up the corridor and could provide significant and efficient transport corridors feeding future intermodal facilities and the relative seaports.

The benefit of well-planned and coordinated infrastructure has an aggregate effect. Using the Page and Forde electorates as an example would provide not only economic benefits to the region and develop strong cross-border linkages but also flow-on benefits in the provision of regional transport. The perception in south-east Queensland at the moment is that, other than on the coastal highways, Queensland stops at the border. The townships of Beaudesert and Rathdowney further to the south are considered the end of the road or, effectively, as the road to nowhere; yet just across the border we have significant communities with significant transport needs. A cross-border relationship supported by a non-parochial planning body like Infrastructure Australia would provide the synergies and the efficiencies of appropriate infrastructure investment. While the economic benefits of a coordinated approach are evident, it is the symbiotic nature of such investments with social benefits that have a greater positive effect on the regional communities. I have been talking to the member for Page and the member for Richmond about achieving these synergies. Having a body like Infrastructure Australia would certainly help with those deliberations.

Regional communities are aware that public transport is based on the principle of economies of scale. The provision of passenger services comes down to density and to the numbers of potential passengers. Better resourcing for road transport corridors like the Summerland Way, which runs from northern New South Wales into Queensland, would create other linkages for possible rail connections for the future industrial hubs of Warwick and Toowoomba and feed into the planned intermodal site of Bromelton, which connects to the rest of Australia through the national rail network and Australia’s seaports. The wider benefits of these wide linkages and the subsequent economies of scale are that the area would have the ability to provide public transport services. All of this is possible—the private investors are there, the local and state authorities realise the need and the residents just want services. The only thing missing is the coordination of all these interests, and this, I believe, can be further progressed by the establishment of Infrastructure Australia. A coordinated approach through the establishment of Infrastructure Australia would give one agency the ability to bring together all the components and resolve all the inconsistencies that I have touched upon in this speech. The proposed Infrastructure Australia is the lynchpin which locks together all the stakeholders and their combined roles in planning, investment and construction. For these reasons, I commend the bill to the House.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I could have given way to the member for Oxley, a great supporter of the Warrego Highway.

Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

But you didn’t!

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, indeed. I rise with great pleasure to speak on the Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008. Only time will tell whether this is just window dressing or whether in fact it will work and deliver real and tangible benefits in infrastructure across Australia. I want to firstly put the record of the coalition government. When we came to government in 1996 we were confronted with a massive debt that was left to us by the previous Labor government—a $96 billion debt that we had to start to pay off. Our international credit rating had been downgraded. We had to not only pay off the debt but get our credit rating restored. Then we could start to invest in real infrastructure. We started to do that in a very significant way. Had we as a coalition government inherited the economy that we have given to the Labor Party—no debt, money in the bank, a AAA credit rating—we would have been able to do a great deal more about infrastructure, but we had to deal with the legacy of 13 years of the mismanagement by Labor government, as well as mismanagement by Labor governments right across Australia. State Labor governments collectively have something like a $60 billion debt today. They are also impacting on the interest rate rises because they are in the financial markets out there having to source cash to meet those commitments caused by their own mismanagement. I say that at the outset to highlight the fact that the Labor Party have been given the golden goose in relation to the economy. Let us see if any golden eggs can be laid in this term—probably the only term that they will have in government—by Infrastructure Australia and this bill before the House, which is a commitment of the Labor Party.

I represent an electorate of some 560,000 square kilometres, stretching from just west of Brisbane down to Benarkin and Blackbutt—not far from the member for Oxley’s boundary, in fact—all the way through to the Northern Territory border. Within the boundaries of the federal electorate of Maranoa we have important mining and agricultural industries which are great wealth creators for this nation. In fact, the coal industry—and I am sure that the member for Oxley would be interested in this—is the largest export earner for the state of Queensland of any industry. The Surat coal basin, virtually unexploited at this point and the largest coal reserve in Australia, will over the next five to 10 years have a significant number of mines opened up in it, underpinning the importance of the need for infrastructure investment in my electorate of Maranoa.

The beef industry is another one. It is the second largest export earner by value—as the member for Barker would appreciate, I am sure—from the state of Queensland. Think of the number of jobs that both those industries create. All of them—the beef industry, the coal industry, the oil and gas industry—are not located in CBD Brisbane down in George Street. They are located out in the regions and in the rural and remote parts of Queensland. But every Queenslander and every Australian benefits from these two industries as well as from many other industries, from the wealth that they create and the jobs that they provide for families. We all benefit from these great resources.

Since 2001 the coalition has invested some $102 million in road infrastructure in the seat of Maranoa. One of the most important road infrastructure investments that the coalition invested in, when we started to get the Labor debt under control, was Roads to Recovery. We are starting to hear whispers from the corridors out there on the blue carpet that this program is going to be gutted. It is for the chop from the finance minister. Mr Deputy Speaker Thomson, I am sure you are alerted to this in your own constituency. Roads to Recovery is a program in which the coalition government doubled road funding, paying that money direct to local governments so that they could invest it in local roads of importance in their own community.

One of the great benefits of that program was that it went to local government, and every dollar went on roads. Had we directed that money through state bureaucracies, five, 10, 15 or 20 per cent of it could have been used up in bureaucracies. Now, before a kilometre of bitumen or sealed road has been put down in any of those local government areas, we hear whispers—as we heard a week ago that the carer payment was to be axed. Next: ‘No, that’s not right.’ It took about five days to turn that one around, but we hear the whispers coming out. Roads to Recovery is in the finance minister’s and the Treasurer’s sights. They know that a large portion of that money goes out into coalition seats in rural and regional and remote parts of Australia, bringing great benefit to those communities. I know the minister has got his eye on Roads to Recovery, but I call on him to commit to the Roads to Recovery program in this year’s budget and subsequent budgets while ever they hold the Treasury benches because of the importance of that infrastructure spending that local governments invest in roads and because every dollar that comes from the Commonwealth goes into roads, not into state bureaucracies.

The coalition committed some $128 million out of AusLink 2 to an investment in the Warrego Highway on the western side of Groom and in my own electorate of Maranoa during the election campaign. I know that the then opposition, now government, committed some $50 million—and this was confirmed by the Prime Minister when he went to Roma unannounced to the local councils, when he went with the agriculture minister to a property near my own home town; in fact near my own home. But they confirmed that that $50 million would be spent on the Warrego Highway, upgrading the highway from Mitchell to Roma so that those type 2 roadtrains could come from Mitchell through to Roma. Many of those type 2 roadtrains come from Western Australia, carrying livestock, carrying cattle. Many of them of course are in the reverse—they couple-up in Roma to go to Darwin and to the other side of Australia with freight and goods into the mining communities and bringing much-needed infrastructure into those communities. But we will be watching with great interest to see when that first $50 million starts to roll out on the Warrego Highway between Mitchell and Roma. I am watching with great interest and, if that is part of Infrastructure Australia, I will welcome it. I will be surprised when the money comes but I will certainly welcome it because it is indeed long overdue.

The other part of the Warrego Highway that is in urgent need of upgrading, which the coalition committed to prior to the election as part of the AusLink 2 funding, is the section from Chinchilla to Dalby. That money would have started to roll out on 1 July this year—not next year or the year after in an election year; on 1 July 2008. That was our commitment. The road from Chinchilla, particularly between Warra and McAllister, is very dangerous—in fact we have had a very tragic death there in the last 18 months. The Warrego Highway is a national highway linking Brisbane and the southern states right through to Mount Isa and Darwin. It is one of the major arterial corridors of our nation. I say to the minister: please, start that money for the Warrego Highway rolling out as of 1 July this year so that we will not see any more tragic accidents on this section of it.

I heard the member for Groom talking earlier about the second range crossing at Toowoomba. That is another vital piece of infrastructure. The coalition committed some $700 million to it during the election campaign, but did we hear the same from the Labor Party? No, we did not. That second range crossing is a vital piece of infrastructure which would link the south-east corner of Queensland, the port of Brisbane, through to the resource areas of western Queensland, right up through to the Surat coal basin and up into Darwin, and all points in between.

Around Dalby at the moment we are seeing large numbers of coal seam methane gas producers tap into the coal seam underneath the Darling Downs and right out to Wandoan and Chinchilla. But coming with that is the power generation infrastructure. Two gas-fired power stations are under construction right now to use coal seam methane, a very clean source of energy that is going to provide a much-needed boost to the capacity of electricity generation in Queensland. When the government are looking at Infrastructure Australia, they must relook at the second range crossing. Why is that? Because right now in Dalby they are setting up a thousand-person camp for the workers on the two new power stations. But what will happen with the construction of these power stations? All the steel, generators, boilers and any other infrastructure that goes with power stations will come from Brisbane, often having come from overseas to the port of Brisbane. The infrastructure will have to be transported across the Great Dividing Range and it will have to travel through Toowoomba to get through to the Surat coal basin where the coal seam methane gas-fired power stations are being established.

We also committed to the Cunningham Highway upgrade, particularly at Cunningham’s Gap. So often the highway at Cunningham’s Gap suffers from rockfalls, particularly in winter when there has been some rainfall through that part of my electorate which joins onto the seat of Blair. We had a proposition to invest some $20 million into the highway at Cunningham’s Gap, not only for safety reasons but also for the continuity of transport so that that highway is not cut off because of a rockfall. That is the main arterial link alternative to the Pacific Highway to Sydney, Melbourne and down through the Newell Highway. The Cunningham Highway is a very important link from the south-east corner of Queensland to the New England Highway and down through New South Wales to Sydney.

I know that we are still waiting on engineers to complete their reports on what is the best solution, but my suggestion to the engineers was that, where there is a danger of rocks falling on the road, perhaps we ought to put a form of ‘tunnel’ over the highway so that if rocks do fall in the future they fall straight over the tunnel-like roof and down into the valley. It will be a very expensive exercise to complete the stabilisation of the upside of that highway through Cunningham’s Gap but I do urge the minister to look at the infrastructure need through Infrastructure Australia to make sure that that is also a project that gets underway sooner rather than later. I hope it is identified as a priority by the minister.

I want to touch very quickly on another important aspect of infrastructure, and that is airport infrastructure. In our term in government, we invested significant sums of money in safety upgrades for many of our airports in rural Australia. That helped many local councils complete the fencing of their airports, not only at the airport terminal side but also round the perimeters. Why? Because so often in drought times there is a risk that landing aircraft could collide with kangaroos on the airstrips, particularly at night.

These airstrips are vital not only for medical evacuations through the Royal Flying Doctor Service but also other passenger services that service the outback of my electorate. There is one particular airport I wanted to touch on in the limited time I have left for me. I have been in touch with the Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia only today on this issue. It concerns the remote community of Bedourie in the Diamantina shire, population 80—the shire with a greater geographic area than the state of Tasmania. It is the headquarters of the Diamantina shire. The state Labor government in Queensland, to their great credit, subsidise the air services out into the remote parts of Queensland. A new contract that has only just been let will see that air service—going right out through Windorah, Birdsville, Bedourie, Boulia and up to Mount Isa from Brisbane and return—upgraded from a Metroliner to the new Saab 42-seater. That will revolutionise, if I can put it that way, the opportunities for tourism in the outback of Queensland, because it is a 42-seater, it will have a flight attendant, a toilet on board and all of those other facilities that so often people just take for granted on the more coastal routes.

One of the issues the Diamantina shire is confronting is the fact they have to upgrade the Bedourie airport. They have to lengthen the runway and upgrade the lighting for emergencies at night. The state government has provided the Diamantina Shire Council with some $900,000 but they are $900,000 short. I spoke to the parliamentary secretary this morning and I said: ‘I would hope that, under the remote area program that we had as a coalition government—the airport upgrade program—there would be some money made available to this very small remote community. They struggle to build these facilities on their own. They have a very small rate base, as you can imagine, with only 80 people in the whole town and community. I suggest that $300,000 to $400,000 would certainly ease the pain on their own ratepayers. While I acknowledge that the state government has provided some $900,000, they are still $900,000 short.’ In the interim, while this airstrip is upgraded, they will have to run some 160 kilometres down a dirt road to Birdsville to pick up passengers and health workers and freight twice a week. It is an urgent request. I appreciate the fact that the parliamentary secretary has already provided the department with a brief on that issue. I am hoping we will get a positive response from the government to assist this small rural community.

Finally, regarding medical infrastructure, the coalition had the Rural Medical Infrastructure Fund, which was part of our Regional Partnerships program. That has been villainised by the government today, but it is a very important program. If there is something that we can do to assist in relation to medical facilities in rural and remote communities, it will be through the Rural Medical Infrastructure Program. In fact, in my own electorate the Birdsville medical clinic received some $900,000 from that infrastructure fund. At Aramac they received some $400,000 and Charleville—which is in my constituency as well—received some $400,000. The Rural Medical Infrastructure Fund allowed those communities to put a medical precinct in those communities. Doctors can come to the town and there are facilities for surgery and waiting rooms and the other associated infrastructure that comes with a medical centre. It is an important program and I once again urge the minister and the Labor government not to gut this program. It provides important financial support for these smaller communities, not for the big cities. We know that they are going to have 24-hour clinics in some of the cities. But I ask members opposite to think of those communities in rural and remote Australia where the large resources of this nation are located—the oil, gas, beef, coal and hard-rock industries—and support those wealth-generating industries and the communities that support them. Medical infrastructure is one of those vital parts of any successful and healthy community. I look forward with great interest to watching the progress of this bill. I hope it is not just a piece of paper that sits around this place unacted on. I will support the bill. I look forward to the infrastructure rolling out across Australia, not just in selected Labor areas or in the high-population areas but also in the rural and remote communities of Australia.

Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a great day today is for Australia. What a great day for infrastructure. In the true tradition of the Labor Party as nation builders, we are actually doing something in our first 100 days in government to make a significant improvement to this nation’s infrastructure—and not just meeting the need for physical infrastructure but improving how the process is managed and how we bring it forward. That was our commitment to the electorate and we are going to keep that commitment. In the great tradition of the Labor Party which saw us, in the eighties and nineties, reform the financial markets and banking, today we are reforming infrastructure. Today we are taking the next great step forward in terms of the things that need to be done in this country. I have always said that if the last 20 years were about anything they were about financial reform, banking reform and the economic status of this country. The next 20 years are about infrastructure reform. That is what we are doing today in delivering on our promise.

I have to just take note here of comments by the previous speaker, the member for Maranoa. What he talked about was a great long list of everything that the coalition, in nearly 12 years in government, did not do—everything they ignored, everything they set to the side, everything they underfunded, everything they were going to do, but nothing that they actually did apart from sticking a few fences in a few spots and maybe a couple of bits and pieces of roads, which were all very welcome but, funnily enough, mostly in National Party seats. That was the great irony in the previous speaker saying he hoped this measure would not be used as a rort. If he knew anything about the Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008, if he understood anything about the process that has been put together in formulating this legislation, he would know that that is precisely the reason the Labor Party and the government have moved to set up Infrastructure Australia and the infrastructure coordinator. It is to take away the pork-barrelling and the rorting and to give this country a decent shot at the proper use of taxpayer funds to deliver infrastructure where it is needed most, and on a priority basis, not just where the National Party needs it most. So today is a very great day for all Australians because this legislation will make a huge difference and have a huge impact. This will set the scene for the next 20 years.

In 20 years time, people will look back to this bill and say that it was the great regulatory change that brought in the framework that enabled the building of key infrastructure in this nation that would otherwise not have been possible because of the way, for more than a decade, that infrastructure had been misused, misrepresented, underfunded, pork-barrelled and completely botched by the previous government. I always lament all those missed opportunities, all the money that went to one project when it should not have gone there at all. Of course every project is important. However, some projects were not asked for or required by the local area, but they got the money anyway. The great thing to be said about Infrastructure Australia is that it will be a framework for guiding and advising government.

I intend to take only 10 minutes in this debate so that the Main Committee can work through the issues it has to handle this afternoon, but I want to run through a few points. With Infrastructure Australia we will have for the first time a national, coordinated approach to infrastructure reform. It is about economic performance. It is about raising national productivity. Those are all key things. I only heard one of the previous speakers from the opposition but I am sure they talked about the legacy they picked up in 1996 and the legacy we have picked up now. Well, let me tell you that the legacy we picked up is the highest inflation in 16 years. This country is under real pressure. Interest rates are going through the roof, with 12 interest rate rises in a row. Productivity is falling through the floor. Our national debt is going through the roof. We have significant problems to deal with. There is a skills crisis and there is an infrastructure crisis. And let us not think for one minute we do not have in this country an infrastructure crisis which will have a real economic impact on everything that takes place.

Look at the infrastructure bottlenecks in terms of our coal, our exports, our agricultural exports, the congestion on our roads and the time it takes people to get to and from work, let alone the goods that travel around this country on our freight roads—there is a really important job to be done. It is not easily done. It takes (a) a lot of money (b) a lot of commitment and (c) a willingness to do it right for the first time in this country. We need a fully coordinated approach through COAG, through the three tiers of government—the federal government, the state governments and local government, in partnership.

You might think it has just been us calling on this to happen, that this was just some sort of election promise. Let me go through a bit of history because I think that is really important here. This mob on the other side, the new opposition, back in 1996 actually had a very similar policy. For a brief moment in history they believed there should be a coordinated approach. But then, when they won power and got drunk on it, they thought: ‘Let’s put that to the side; we’d rather just dictate where the money goes. Let’s forget about coordination; let’s just send it to those seats we think are more important than other seats.’ In the end, if you look at the litany of infrastructure development in this country, it was based more on which seat you held than on what was the biggest priority.

History tells us clearly that key industry groups like the Business Council of Australia, CEDA, Australian Industry Group, Infrastructure Partnerships Australia and Engineers Australia all called for a coordinated approach to infrastructure planning and development in this country. But those calls fell on deaf ears because the then Howard government ignored the calls of the community, of the Business Council, of all those independent voices, about what was the best way. They understood, like we understand today, the missing opportunities.

I will give you one in my local area—there are hundreds right across the country. For 10 years I campaigned and lobbied on having the Ipswich Motorway, that vital piece of infrastructure, fully upgraded, not just in my electorate but in the electorate of Blair. Blair was held by a Liberal member who is no longer with us; instead, we now have the very fine member for Blair, Shayne Neumann. I congratulate him for being here for this very important bill. There were a whole heap of other road projects—the Bruce, the Cunningham, the Warrego and a whole range of roads across this country. But it was never important enough for the government, in more than a decade, to ever really do anything about those except when they smelt a political opportunity, saving the backsides of either one of their National Party members or one of their Liberal Party members. When it came to real infrastructure development, real reform, doing something that could be acceptable to the whole community, based on a real outcome in the national interest, we got nothing. That is the outcome from the former government after more than a decade of being in the job.

They talk about the great economy they left us. Let me remind them of the great surpluses they had. We appreciated those surpluses but they were not spent on infrastructure. Where are the great days we used to have when the Labor Party, nation builders, actually did courageous things like the Snowy Mountains scheme?

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

AusLink is four times bigger.

Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am getting to it. The former member for Gwydir talked about AusLink being the greatest infrastructure project since the Snowy Mountains scheme. It beggars belief you could even compare the two in the same century, let alone one with the other. They are not even remotely similar in the sort of courage or commitment that was displayed. We supported AusLink 1 and AusLink 2. We will keep those programs and we will improve them. But we will go a step further than the former government. We are going to approach this from a real sense of partnership with the state governments, whoever they may be, and local governments. Infrastructure in this country is far too important to leave up to individuals and parties who hack it in for themselves. That is exactly what we got.

While we are going back to the last century in terms of records, let me remind the former government, the coalition, of this: we now have some of the highest inflation that this country has had in some 16 years. Ordinary people, working people, are under real pressure. There are a whole range of economic circumstances where, while the economy generally speaking is good, there is a lot of pressure. You cannot argue the economic data. You cannot argue just one side of it; you have to argue both sides. But the real way forward in this is not only good economic management, which we are doing right now—tackling inflation and taking the pressure off high interest rates—but infrastructure, actually getting the productive capacity of this country up to a reasonable level. The problem we are going to face in the next two to three to five years is that, while we will continue to dig up the same amount of, or more, coal, we are not going to be able to ship it out. If coal prices, steel prices or the prices of other natural resources come down, we are going to feel the real economic impact of that.

The former government, the Howard government, had an absolute boom in terms of nearly $400 billion added to the bottom line of the economy. It is easy to be a good Treasurer in great economic times; it is much, much harder, as we see the former Treasurer sitting there smirking as he always has, realising that he did not leave the economy in quite as good a condition as he thinks he did. I remember very well in this place the lambasting we used to get from the former Treasurer, coming in here and saying that he was the driver of a Ferrari and that it was a finely tuned racing car, a fine motor vehicle, that could not be entrusted to anyone else. The problem is he drove the Ferrari straight into a brick wall, wrecked it, walked away and then expected everyone else to pick up the pieces.

We are prepared to take on that challenge and we are going to start by doing it right here today in meeting our election commitment of delivering Infrastructure Australia. I highly recommend this legislation to everyone in the House and say to the community simply this: for the first time in Australian history, we will have a regulated, properly controlled body that will look after the infrastructure needs of all Australians, not just those who live in certain seats.

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

I move:

That further proceedings on the bill be conducted in the House.

Question agreed to.