Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is an important motion because it recognises the government’s action on long-term infrastructure as well as in making sure that the financial crisis is met head-on in terms of what can happen in Australia. It should be no surprise that there are many people who would support this particular motion, because when you look at the government’s action on infrastructure and who has supported the government’s position there is such a long line of different organisations, starting with the Australian Industry Group and the National Farmers Federation. The Reserve Bank governor himself at the last public hearing of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics said that no-one could describe as excessive the amount of stimulus that the Rudd government has injected into the economy to try and deal with the global financial crisis.

Of course, as recently as yesterday President Obama mentioned Australia and the tactics and strategies that have been adopted by the Rudd government in a positive light to meet the global financial crisis. If you look at the supporters of the government’s action, the only people who are in opposition to this are the opposition themselves. They are so confused and so out of touch with what people are thinking, because their main preoccupation at the moment is not the economy and it is not their constituents; it is where the leadership actually sits this week. We have the situation of rotating leaders of the Liberal Party. People are jockeying to see which frontbench position they will get. This has absolutely paralysed the Liberal Party in terms of any effective policy debate.

The position of the opposition leader is so confused. He welcomed the first stimulus package and said it was a good thing. Now, some months down the track, not only have the opposition opposed the $42 billion stimulus package outright but they have been talking in opposition to the original package that they had supported. That is how confused the Liberal-National Party coalition are on these issues. They are not motivated by what is right and what is going to work for the economy; they are motivated by the short-term politics of the Liberal party room. That is a very sad state to be in.

This government came to office with an agenda of nation-building infrastructure. Because of the global financial crisis we have had to accelerate this in a whole range of areas. If you look at the last 12 years of the Howard government, you will see why there are so many infrastructure projects that need to be done. We had a government asleep at the wheel. They had a mining boom and money poured into Canberra but nothing was done with the major infrastructure. Nothing was done for our hospitals, our schools or the water infrastructure that the member for Mayo spoke about. The Rudd government had a plan for these things when it came to office. In addressing the global financial crisis there is a specific plan too.

We are talking about the largest school modernisation program in Australia’s history, massive infrastructure spending on our roads, rail and ports—and I will come back to that area in due course—the construction of over 20,000 new homes, the solar hot water rebate, the help that has gone to the Australian car industry and the most important and historic agreement with the states and territories in the COAG process about freeing up long-term money for the service delivery areas of health and education. These plans for major long-term and medium-term infrastructure will ensure that Australia is a better place. They will ensure that economic activity will continue and is encouraged and that we are cushioned as best we possibly can be from the global financial crisis.

The other area is the local council stimulus. Wyong shire—80 per cent of which is in my electorate—received over $1½ million in the community infrastructure program. It was with a great deal of pleasure that only two weeks ago I was with Mayor Bob Graham looking at where the money is going to be spent on the new netball courts at Wyong.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You could build a bikeway with that.

Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For some $400,000, there will be eight new netball courts. While we were there announcing the project the surveyors were behind us starting the work. It is about getting the local infrastructure there too. This is a project that the local council have been trying to get done for the last 10 years. They had no help from the previous government. Now we have local jobs in the local area as part of these infrastructure projects.

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That will get us out of recession!

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

Order! The member is entitled to be heard in silence.

Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

These important infrastructure projects are being addressed not just in my electorate but right through electorates all over Australia. These are infrastructure projects that the coalition have opposed and have not come to the party on.

It is interesting to see what my local mayor, Bob Graham, said about it. He said this was one of the greatest injections into local jobs that he had seen in his 15 years on local council. This is not a bloke who is a Labor Party hack; this is a bloke who is actually a former member of the Liberal Party. In fact he sat in state parliament as the Liberal member for The Entrance. But like the Australian Industry Group, like the National Farmers Federation and like all intelligent people they can see the advantage of getting this infrastructure in there.

The area that I want to spend the rest of my time talking about is roads and transport in particular. My electorate is an hour and a half from Sydney. We have a rail link there and we have roads everywhere. So to get around in my electorate you need to have a car and drive or to get to the train station and commute. This government, even as recently as today, under the $4.7 billion nation-building package announced over $850,000 worth of roadworks in my electorate—in particular, the installation of traffic signals at the intersection of Sparks Road and the F3 freeway ramps. This is an area that has become very busy and dangerous. This sort of infrastructure investment in our roads will make sure that traffic flows better and make sure that we can drive around in a safer way. It will also make sure that jobs which are needed locally are actually there locally.

In terms of rail, one of the big promises at the last election was in relation to building a dedicated freight line. That goes up much of the east coast. For my electorate in particular what it does is take 1,900 trucks per day off the F3. If you could imagine driving up and down the freeway, just through my electorate, 1,900 truck trips is an incredible number of trips that is now going to be taken off the road because of this very good rail infrastructure that the Rudd government has committed to.

So these issues of nation-building infrastructure, particularly in terms of roads and rail, as part of this infrastructure program to make sure that we are cushioned from the worst impacts of the global economic crisis are vitally important for electorates in the outer metropolitan areas and those regional electorates like my own of Dobell. What a breath of fresh air it is to have a government that is out there saying: ‘We are actually going to build this nation. We are actually going to go out there and put infrastructure in where it is needed to make sure that we have a better nation and that our citizens have a better life.’ This is an important part of the economic stimulus not just because it creates local jobs but also because it builds long-needed infrastructure in areas where it is required. This is a motion that should be supported by all members.

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Every now and then in political life you are bowled a ball that moves so slowly and so predictably, bounces that little bit short and simply does not spin but rather falls into the corridor and is ripe for the picking to be sent over the grandstands and out of the field, and this is one of those motions. When the inexperienced member for Dobell came forward with this motion there was a cacophony of desire on our side of politics to speak to it tonight. There was a cacophony of voices on our side of politics wanting to talk about the lack of infrastructure that we have seen in decades of state government mismanagement and then to look at the stimulus package, which is intended to address the needs of infrastructure.

If you are after a basic summary of what has occurred in the stimulus package on infrastructure then, without embarrassing anyone, the Parliamentary Library quote was, ‘The only thing that has happened with transport infrastructure is boom gates.’ So I thought, ‘We must read it in a little bit more detail just to see exactly what is happening in the stimulus package that pertains to transport.’ After seeing the member for Dobell speak about netball courts until he had two minutes and 33 seconds to go, I thought to myself, ‘Clearly we are completely off the rails.’ Through some incredible revelation, with two minutes and 33 seconds to go he got us back on the topic, because the government know that they have about two minutes and 33 seconds of economic sunshine before they are looking down at the true impotence of their stimulus package, and they only have about two minutes and 33 seconds of things to say about transport infrastructure in toto.

I see across from me a Queensland colleague who knows just what the struggle was like on the issue of the Ipswich Motorway. It was so tough. When the money was committed by the former federal government, was that money spent? Was it committed? Was it actually used on the ground? No, it was not. It was hunkered down in state government coffers as they struggled to find ways to roll that money out.

We have been up there in Queensland and seen what 12 years of the Beattie and Bligh government has done to our state. Before we all draw breath, let us remember precisely what the debt is in Queensland. At the moment it is $74 billion and ticking. That is approaching Australia’s total government debt from 1993 to 1996. Of that amount, $68 billion was accrued prior to the economic slowdown, so let us not for a moment think that we are running into troubles due to the slowdown in Queensland—oh, no; this has been a problem running for years. The rivers of gold ran to nothing and the providence that Queensland knows, that economic wealth, was frittered away. What we have seen in the last month is a discussion about the lack of transport infrastructure available to Queenslanders.

Given the complete enthusiasm on our side of politics to talk about this motion, why did I prevail? It was because I am from Queensland, I am from an outer metropolitan seat, I have seen the neglect by the Queensland Labor government and I have seen the futility of the stimulus package to deliver on economic infrastructure. If you were to do a simple matrix and have a look at the stimulus packages around the globe, you might look at where the tax incentives and tax breaks are compared to where the cash splash is and where the economic infrastructure is compared to the social infrastructure. While our Prime Minister makes great mileage of having moved swiftly and decisively, his stimulus package virtually neglects economic infrastructure. Let me say that there is never a bad time to invest in schools and, for the benefit of the member for Dobell, that there is never a bad time to invest in netball courts. I am not about to criticise that. You may employ two people, a cement truck and a netball ring. But let me say this: there has never been a better time than now to invest in economic infrastructure.

What will we be looking back on that arose from when we went into debt to the tune of $60 billion? I will answer my own question: we will be looking back on a cash splash, proven once to be completely impotent but repeated this month and next in the hope that, having lost at the roulette wheel in December, we will somehow get a different result from the same act in March and April. Let us look at the retail figures and at the final household consumption in May-June. When people reflect in a sober moment, having received the payment gratefully from their government and worked hard to earn that payment, let us see what it does to deliver on transport infrastructure. That is a fair question.

Let us take my electorate, on which I can speak with some authority. We have Mount Cotton Road, which regularly leads to deaths, which has been nominated as a non-priority road and which, in the stimulus package, receives sweet nothing from the federal government. We have the Cleveland-Redland Bay Road, a road that is travelled daily by thousands of cars and is a single-lane byway. I point out to those who have not visited those undulating hills of Bowman—that soporific route down from Brisbane as you go over the hills, through Bonner and through the koala corridor—that when you get to Bowman you find communities of the size of Redland Bay and Victoria Point. These are thriving megalopolises of 22,000 people, and to leave those communities you have to use a single-lane road. There is not a byway or a highway with more than a single lane by which you can leave those communities in 2009.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Sidebottom interjecting

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have a Tasmanian colleague here shaking his head. After decades and decades of pork-barrelling, you know nothing of the suffering of the people of Bowman. Let me tell you what the state Labor member had to say when he was pressed about transport infrastructure by a facility whose CEO said, ‘We’re concerned that, when you four-lane this highway with either federal or state resources, it will be difficult for ambulances to enter or egress from this property.’ The response was simple. The MP said: ‘Don’t worry; the dual-laning of this road won’t happen for years. We will just upgrade the intersections to keep the whingers happy.’

What is driving transport infrastructure in my state of Queensland if that is the attitude of a sitting state member up for re-election and the sentiment held by a local member in my area who should be fighting hard for the infrastructure our community needs? It should not even require a debate to understand that you would need a dual-lane carriageway leading from communities the size of Victoria Point and Redland Bay. Is that too much to ask from colleagues on the other side who are focused so much on delivering netball courts and netball rings to their schools? As I have said, there is never a bad time for a netball court! But there has never been a better time for economic infrastructure than now, and it is not happening.

I do not like to bore those opposite with details about their own state government, but let me remind them of the $3 billion blow-out, year-on-year, for infrastructure projects. Let me remind you of the $2.4 billion budget blow-out for this year alone. This is a state government that was just as blind as our federal colleagues in identifying the recession that we were entering in 2009. Could we get any preparatory position from them on transport infrastructure? The answer is no. At the budget in 2008 it was just more Labor spending and no provisioning for the future. This government simply profited from and fed themselves profligately on the budget they inherited from the previous administration. That is nothing to be proud of. And if this government thought truly about this motion, it would realise that it really achieves nothing more than highlighting how little has been delivered by its state colleagues.

Let us remember that there is an interest component to all of this borrowing—and this is a lot of money. I often say to my constituents, ‘This is the figure of two followed by 11 zeros,’ to give them a sense of how far the federal government is going into debt. In Queensland—well, it is only $74 billion! And the interest on it is only $2.6 billion! Where is that sort of money—that interest payment—to be found when you are trying to run hospitals and schools? The answer is simple: ‘We will borrow that, too. We will borrow to make the interest payment.’ There is no provisioning for the future. And, when you think about how hard it was to pay off debt from 1996 to 2004, when we finally paid off the debt—

Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What about the sale of Telstra?

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Dobell highlights the sale of Telstra. It was the painful, unpopular but ultimately successful sale of state entities that even got us there in the first place. I ask you: what public infrastructure are you going to sell to pay off your debt? It is all gone. The low-hanging fruit is gone. What are you going to be selling? Your highways—and putting tolls on them? Where will you find the money to pay off debt? You have a Ruddbank that will send us another $28 billion into debt. This is a government with no idea and no clue.

I will finish as I started. My people in Bowman are good-hearted, resourceful people. They settled the area of Redlands as small farming communities which have been enveloped by the outer metropolitan spread of Brisbane. That is what gives me a right to talk about this motion and about how the infrastructure has not kept up with the population. The Labor notion that you roll out the community, borrow to pay for the infrastructure and then find a way to deliver it, years and years later, is why we are in the predicament we are seeing in this Queensland state election, whether you are looking at Mount Cotton Road or the Cleveland to Redland Bay Road; at our hospitals, which get a helipad when they need decent services; or at our bay being closed up—all they get is a concrete reef. I urge you to get more infrastructure delivered— (Time expired)

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

Order! The member for Bowman’s time has now expired and I thank the member for his very spirited contribution.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would just ask the member for Bowman how long he has been in this place. He seems to believe that the Labor government has been in for 18 months and yet we have caused the complete de-infrastructure of Australia! He was a member of the previous government. I do not know what he did—well, I have read some things—as a member in the former government to influence his government to spend money on infrastructure in that beautiful place he calls Bowman. I do not know what his story is. It would have been good if he had been prepared to speak about infrastructure in general and its importance as an economic stimulus, whether in this economy or any other. But I can tell him that infrastructure is, first and foremost, part and parcel of our $42 billion stimulus and was part of the $10 billion stimulus before that, because infrastructure is about jobs. Infrastructure is about sustaining employment—hopefully improving and increasing employment opportunities—and about giving skills development to those involved in it. And, most importantly, it is about providing valuable assets, both social and physical, to our community.

Under any objective observation of the last 12 years, the federal investment in significant national infrastructure has been lacking. We have seen those opposite point the finger at state governments; and maybe we can indeed point the finger at state governments—but we can also say that the federal part of our system did not support willingly and wholeheartedly the development of important economic infrastructure in this country. This stimulus package seeks to do that. I said earlier today that we do not have all the answers and we have produced a package with warts and all. This is about stimulating the economy. It is about developing infrastructure which we need not only now but also into the future, so I was disappointed that the member for Bowman wanted to rant and rave about his goat track into and out of the particular place he was talking about. He had a responsibility as a federal member in the former government to do something about that. I do not know what he did, but ranting and raving like that would not have got him much of a hearing from Mr Howard and his acolytes in terms of the distribution of infrastructure funding.

I looked through this $42 billion stimulus package—the Nation Building and Jobs Plan—seeking infrastructure. I can point to my electorate and say that, after a lot of lobbying, and I would put to you that it was evidence based lobbying, we already have a commitment of at least $8 million for local infrastructure. Each one of those projects is going to involve jobs. Each one of these projects is going to be an asset to my community. I am glad we did it and I wish the previous government had done it. I hope future governments do this as well so we all share these benefits.

Let us look at the education component of the stimulus package, for instance, something that unfortunately those opposite voted against—but I know that deep down they are very happy because we have invested $14.7 billion in infrastructure projects, particularly in primary schools. Each of those schools is going to have a facility for better teaching and learning, which I mentioned earlier today. But most importantly, each of those schools is going to have a project or projects that are going to lead to construction jobs and jobs in the industries that service those construction jobs. There will be new carpets and air-conditioning. You name it; it will be made available. That is going to stimulate our local economy. If you do not support that, you do not support infrastructure investment and you do not know what infrastructure means in our community. What about the $6 billion for the construction of new public housing and $400 million for repairs and maintenance to existing public housing? What about the $252 million for the Defence Housing Authority to build an extra 802 residences? Those are just some of the examples of infrastructure spending that is going to stimulate this economy. That is what we should be talking about; that is what those opposite should be supporting.

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The motion before the parliament tonight talks about the government’s nation-building infrastructure policies for dealing with the global financial crisis. It especially notes the investment in outer metropolitan transport. I have to report to you tonight that I am extraordinarily disappointed with the performance—or, in fact, the non-performance—of the Bligh Labor government in Queensland. My Labor colleagues opposite will also be extraordinarily disappointed.

The Australian government has provided money for infrastructure development, and well it might. But the Bligh government is blocking the expenditure of that money. Let me tell you about the Douglas arterial road in Townsville. The Douglas Arterial Road was North Queensland’s first motorway. After an enormous fight with the state government I was able to get that built but it is built to two-lane standard. It has been so successful as a bypass, with a benefit-cost ratio of nearly 13 to one, that it has reached a situation where it is carrying more traffic than it can. It needs to be four lanes.

So, at the last election both the then opposition and I promised that we would make the Douglas Arterial Road four lanes. Fifty-five million dollars was announced by the current Australian government as its contribution to the four-laning of that most significant road in Townsville, but it needed a state contribution. And what has the state government done? The state government has done zero—nothing. It will not commit; it will not provide any state funding. So the project will not proceed. Here we have a national infrastructure building project funded under that program that cannot proceed because of the Labor state government in Queensland. How wrong is that? We all want to sustain jobs. We want to build a road for our community.

The Douglas arterial connects the Lavarack Barracks, the Townsville Hospital and the university to the northern beaches. But we cannot four-lane it. It also connects with the new Townsville Ring Road, which will be opened in the next few weeks. The Townsville Ring Road is a logical extension from the south through to the north to the Bruce Highway—another high-speed motorway, but there is no four-laning. That is wrong, and our community will mark down the Bligh Labor government for the utter contempt that they have shown us. I think the Australian federal government will mark down the Bligh Labor government, because we want to get on with these infrastructure building projects. We want them to happen.

And why won’t the Bligh Labor government provide its share for the construction of this new highway? They are now $74 billion in debt. I worry about that; I worry in the sense that it took the former Australian government 10 years to pay off $96 billion of Labor debt—10 years—with the resources of the Commonwealth. With Queensland $74 billion in debt and with only the resources of the state, I put it to you that I do not think Queensland will ever pay off its debt. What an extraordinary position to find ourselves in: we cannot pay off the debt of the state because Labor has borrowed too much. And you all know what has happened with Queensland’s credit rating; it has been downgraded. The government itself cannot borrow any more money. It is just an amazing situation. I call on the Bligh Labor government in Queensland to immediately address its responsibilities and to get this—

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

You should be running in the election for Premier of Queensland!

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, I should! I join with my colleague the member for Oxley in calling on the Bligh Labor government to fund its responsibilities and get on with what the Commonwealth wants to build for the benefit of the people of Australia and the benefit of the people Townsville.

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

Listening to the speakers from the other side of the House, you can tell how out of touch they are. They are totally unable to come to terms with the fact that the global financial crisis was not caused by the Rudd government: it is a global financial crisis. I put it to them that the Rudd government is leading the way and being a model for the rest of the world in how to deal with the global financial crisis. One of the Howard government’s legacies to Australia is the fact that in the good times they failed to invest in infrastructure. Now the Rudd Labor government is showing them just how it should be done, by making a massive investment in infrastructure through its national infrastructure fund.

In my own electorate, there have been numerous projects funded. As recently as today, through the nation-building package, I was notified that $80,000 is going to be spent on local roads—on the Pacific Highway at Flowers Drive and at Cams Wharf and $30,000 at Gorokan. These are very important policies that invest in local infrastructure whilst at the same time investing in local jobs. The Rudd government has also invested over $500 million in the ARTC in the Hunter, which will lead to indirect investment of more than $1 billion.

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

Order! The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 41. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting. The member for Shortland will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed on a future day.