Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Kennedy proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The urgent need for infrastructure to create new industry and permanent jobs

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Infrastructure is not about generalities or macroeconomics; it is about microeconomics and specifics. The federal government, in putting out their infrastructure priorities, have put out some $23,000 million—I will leave it to other people to argue about broadband. The second item is a true national energy grid. The parliament and the people of Australia truly owe a great debt of gratitude to Martin Ferguson, the minister in this area. I cannot speak for Western Australia or the Pilbara region, but all of Australia’s hard rock metals are in the northern third of Australia. Almost more than a third of the nation’s export earnings are coming from hard rock minerals that are in that top third of the county, and there is no baseload power station within 1,000 kilometres, nor is there even a grid system available in these areas.

The first item mentioned in the infrastructure package after broadband is the national energy grid and the first item mentioned is the north-west minerals province. As late as yesterday morning I spoke, on another matter, to one of the mine developers in the north-west mineral province of Queensland. He raised the issue of electricity and he said the electricity people have quoted him a figure of $1.4 million a month. He said, ‘That will be pretty good.’ I knew his reserves were about $200 million. If you have a seven- or eight-year mine life—which I think would be reasonable in this case—he is looking at $30 million a year in income and $17 million of that for electricity.

If you are not on the national grid, where power is generated at $37 per megawatt hour, but you are off the grid, then you have to look at diesel power, which is enormously costly in terms of CO2 and enormously costly in terms of money. But that is all that is left open to these people—or else to bring gas up from Central Australia, some 1,500 kilometres away, which is servicing this tiny north-western grid at the present moment. But, again, Mount Isa Mines have done a marvellous job in making sure that the state government is aware of the problem and also bringing it to the attention of the federal government. Steve de Kruijff is doing most of that work.

They are consuming about 200 megawatts 24/7. They run all hours of the day, every day of the year. That is about two million megawatt hours, and at $100 per megawatt hour that is $200 million—these figures are very rough and general—and if they have an income, which they have from time to time, of $2,000 million, then they are looking at somewhere between 10 and 20 per cent of their entire income going on electricity. This House constantly talks about carbon. Pushing gas all the way up from Central Australia into Northern Australia and then firing all of Mount Isa Mines with this gas—but not being able to fire any of the other mines in the area—shows the wasteful nature of it.

Joe Gutnick puts it best, I think. He said, ‘If I get the electricity capacity at a reasonable price, and if I get the rail capacity at a reasonable price, then we will open up Legend Phosphate,’ which is a big, mainly Indian group that will be worth $1,500 million to the Australian government. No-one doubts for a moment that this is reality. There has been a lot of talk in the media about Gorgon—$50,000 million. That is a wonderful thing for Australia, undoubtedly. But we produce that every three or four years from the north-west mineral province. It really is peanuts to us. We are producing, every year, $13,000 million for the Australian economy and we have not even got an electricity supply! The most elementary item of infrastructure is not there.

When I asked former Treasurer Costello about this in the House, he said, ‘If private enterprise wants it, then private enterprise will provide it.’ I would like to see Mr Costello, who has never been involved in the commercial world, go out there and try and get 20 or 30 users to agree to take that power exactly when your power station is coming on line. A multi-user facility of its nature cannot be operated by commercial interests. And the proof of the pudding is that it has not been done.

When we talk about infrastructure, with all due respect to the government, broadband is not infrastructure. Quite frankly, at $43,000 million, there is not one single permanent job there—with the exception of the Tamworth tunnel. That is very small beer. To spend $43,000 million of the public’s money and not produce a single permanent job is reprehensible, to say the least. What we provide for the government with this clean energy corridor—the north-west clean energy corridor, as it has come to be known—is an answer to that problem, because Gutnick has said that he will go ahead. That is $1,500 million a year. As luck would have it for the government, that transmission line proposed to go from Mount Isa back to the national grid north of Townsville provides a historic opportunity for them, because at Cloncurry there is 10 megawatts, with a little toy wonder—we appreciate that—photovoltaic operation by the state government.

There is a very big project to take out six million hectares of prickly acacia—an appalling infestation causing the destruction of our native flora and fauna throughout that area. They will take it and burn it and turn it into electricity and replace it with biodiesel trees, which is a magnificent project for Australia. There is 100 megawatts of clean, renewable electricity there, from Julia Creek to Hughenden.

The next town is Pentland, and that is where there is a project of national and historical significance. It is a solar biofuels project. It requires a small dam to take some water down to put an area under sugar cane. During the day the power to the boilers will be provided by solar energy, by solar concentrators, and then during the evening the fuel for the boilers will be provided by sugarcane fibre, which is left over after the sugar is extracted. The sugar will be converted very cheaply into ethanol. There will be over $1,000 million worth of ethanol per year, and there will be some $300-odd million worth of electricity generated as well. The Hells Gate Dam is a very tall dam. It is a very excellent site, a very small ponded area. Because it is so high, there is 100 megawatts of peak load power available there.

The clean energy corridor hits the coast just north of Townsville, near Ingham, where there are two—and, please God, soon to be three—sugar mills. North of that, at Tully, there is another sugar mill. Those four sugar mills, even if there are only three of them, should be able to provide some 200 megawatts of electricity. Instead of burning the sugarcane fibre to simply get rid of it, they can burn it to create electricity—as all the sugar mills do now but only in a very small way.

What we have here is Tennant-Cloncurry, 100 megawatts; Julia Creek-Hughenden, 450 megawatts; at Pentland, the Hells Gate, through the hydroelectricity, another 100 megawatts; and another 200 megawatts on the coast at those four sugar mills—providing 860 megawatts of renewable energy. There are only 40,000 megawatts of renewable energy in Australia. What we are providing here—and I do not want to go into the details of it—is effectively two per cent of Australia’s electricity needs from the North Australia clean energy corridor.

We thank the government and the minister in particular for looking at the project. It will require some government assistance—but very little. I add that North Queensland already has 200 megawatts of renewable energy through our hydro and sugar mills, and if the other sugar mills are converted there is another 400 megawatts there. So we will have 1,500 megawatts on the national grid. For those who are very strongly oriented towards a green and clean Australia, I am not a great fan of Mr Al Gore, but in An Inconvenient Truth, the greenies’ bible—and, I say as an opponent, a good and interesting book—his first solution to CO2 is growing ethanol. Sugar ethanol is infinitely better from a carbon point of view. As good as grain ethanol is—26 per cent benefit—it is infinitely better with sugar. I will not go into that today.

No-one here seems to worry much about the current account. I was not the Treasurer of Australia, but Mr Keating was Treasurer of Australia, and when the current account hit $15 billion he said on the John Laws program in 1986 that we were in danger of becoming a banana republic. John Howard reminded him of that in 1995, when it hit $23 billion. John Howard went on to say that of course the overwhelming economic challenge above all else was our continuing damagingly high current account deficit. No-one in this place seems to worry; they seem to think we get up every morning and there will be food on the table, houses will be built and we will get motorcars. They do not stop for a moment to think about buying something from overseas. We are net importers of just about all food in Australia now. We most certainly are for fruit, vegetables, fisheries and pork. All we are left with as net exporters, really, are beef and grain. In manufacturing, everyone in this House will agree that we import almost everything. Where are we going to get the money to buy these things?

I speak for undoubtedly the richest mineral province on earth. We have not yet touched 500 million tonnes of iron ore. We did not even look for it; we just stumbled across it when we were looking for other things. We have two per cent of the world’s uranium, which has not been touched. We have the largest vanadium deposits in the world—though of very poor quality. Almost all steel contains vanadium. It has not been touched. We have the fourth biggest oil shale deposit in the world. It has not been touched. There are only 24 commercial phosphate deposits in the world. We have four of them. Three of them have not been touched. That does not account for the 20 copper, silver, lead and zinc mines in the area that have not been touched, including Dougall River, which has $20 billion worth of reserves sitting there. They have not been touched. They cannot open this up unless they get infrastructure. The most important infrastructure to them is electricity at a reasonable price.

We provide for the government the opportunity to provide two per cent of Australia’s electricity cleanly and renewably from the North Australia clean energy corridor. We provide for the government four per cent of Australia’s entire petrol need as renewable, non-polluting and with no CO2. This is a wonderful opportunity for the government. The previous government committed to and this government has continued on with a program to close down 20 per cent of what is left of Australia’s agriculture production in the Murray-Darling. Surely it is immoral to close that down in a world where a billion people go to bed hungry every night. Surely there has to be some movement north, where all of Australia’s water is, to provide food from that area. We provide the government with the opportunity to make a small start on a program to resurrect agriculture in Australia, to come to grips with carbon dioxide and to be reminded of the great builders in Australian history.

Theodore built the sugar industry with government finance. The Holden motorcar factory was built with government finance from Ben Chifley. The Snowy Mountains Scheme was built with government finance from Ben Chifley. The Australian coal and aluminium industries were created by Joh Bjelke-Petersen with infrastructure provided by government finance. We stand here today, asking for an enlightened government that will do some true nation building that will put them in the same category as Theodore, Chifley and Bjelke-Petersen. I might add that the current account that John Howard said was $23 billion averages around $60 billion now. We have an opportunity to turn that around. (Time expired)

Maxine McKew (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I stand here, delighted to take part in this matter of public importance discussion as a representative of an enlightened building government. I appreciated many of the points that the member for Kennedy made, in particular the way he concluded by drawing on some of the great builders of the past. The member for Kennedy will recall that long, long ago in a previous life, I was a much younger journalist in his home state of Queensland—indeed, the member for Kennedy was a member of the Queensland state parliament and a minister in the Bjelke-Petersen government. I remember some of our conversations. I recall some of our more recent conversations about that era in Queensland politics. I would say that we have agreed to disagree on some points there, as the member for Kennedy knows.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

But you’re not seriously questioning that he created the coal and aluminium industries in Australia.

Maxine McKew (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the former National Party Premier of Queensland, it is true, was a builder, but he was also a destroyer. He was the premier who wanted to mine Fraser Island. He did not get away with that. He was the premier who sought to knock down the historic Bellevue Hotel. He did get away with that, but I think one could argue that that was the beginning of the end of that era. I know that in more recent times the member for Kennedy and I have had a few very interesting exchanges about that point in history, but I come to the substantive point of this matter of public importance. It is an important issue, and I am delighted to take part for two reasons. It gives me the opportunity to talk about the building decade ahead. That is what this government envisages—a building decade where we invest in schools, in community facilities, in broadband and in road and rail.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Katter interjecting

Maxine McKew (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On a personal note, I come back to the historic references that the member for Kennedy made there. I am personally delighted to take part in this because I come from a family of builders. It is a matter of great pride in my family that my grandfather, Joe McKew, was one of the key people who helped build Brisbane’s Story Bridge. The member for Kennedy knows this bridge. The Story Bridge is the great bridge that links north and south Brisbane. If you look out from Queensland’s parliament house—

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Katter interjecting

Maxine McKew (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Exactly. The point is this: the Story Bridge along with the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Snowy Hydro were the great big ambitious projects that were built at a time when the country was poorer, when we were smaller in population. But we did these big ambitious things at a time when we had, if you like, smaller horizons, when we were more geographically isolated. But at some point we said goodbye to nation building, and I think it is a matter for great regret and in fact the real tragedy, quite frankly. Of the boom of the late nineties and the early part of the 21st century, the previous Liberal government and previous Liberal ministers were not nation builders. We are. Labor is the building party.

I know that the member for Kennedy appreciates this point as well: that there is no more important objective for our government than supporting jobs by investing in the infrastructure that we need for tomorrow. Without the government’s actions to stimulate our economy and support jobs, the full burden of a global recession would be falling on the shoulders of Australian families and indeed on businesses. Without the government’s investment, we would have lost tens of thousands of jobs, perhaps many more. Tens of thousands of Australians would be out of work. Our actions have helped to shore up the economy. Building world-class infrastructure, big and small, has been part of that and is supporting long-term prosperity.

If I could go through some of the details of some of the key points that I know the member for Kennedy takes to heart. We are investing at unprecedented levels in transport. We have delivered historic nation-building investments to the point where 70 per cent, in fact, of our economic stimulus is going into infrastructure. Specifically, there will be $36 billion over six years to begin fixing and modernising the nation’s road, rail and port infrastructure. The federal roads budget alone is $28 billion over six years. That is more than twice what the previous government spent over a similar period of time.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

But it does not directly create jobs; it is different to building a sugar mill.

Maxine McKew (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will come to some of those issues. But all of this funding, the Roads to Recovery funding, as the member for Kennedy would know, is going to local governments across the country. The investment is broad and deep.

We have seen also the significant federal investment to relieve bottlenecks in and around our ports. We have more than doubled to $21.2 billion the federal investment in rural and regional roads. There is also the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program, with more than $1 billion going to small-, medium- and large-scale infrastructure projects, and it is going to every shire in the country. I have been doing a lot of travelling recently, criss-crossing the country, and I can tell the member for Kennedy that mayors, deputy mayors and council members are delighted with this direct investment because it is going to projects that they identify, that they have had on their books for years. Because of the contribution that the Commonwealth is making, they are able to get those projects started this year, when we need to get activity in the economy and to support jobs.

I come to the extraordinarily good news we have had this week. As the Prime Minister has been saying over the last couple of days during question time, there is this spectacular good news for the LNG industry. The Gorgon and Pluto projects are exceptional examples of long-term investments. With final approval, the Gorgon project will be Australia’s largest ever resource project. It will bring enormous economic benefit to Australians. It will generate 6,000 jobs at the peak of construction. The member for Kennedy is talking about the need for jobs. Jobs are critical. Jobs are an essential part of the proposition that he puts before the House. There will be demand for about $33 billion in Australian goods and services over the next few years and about $40 billion in revenue back to the Commonwealth. It will guarantee a boost to our export income with contracts to sell around $300 billion worth of LNG to customers in the Asia-Pacific over the next 20 years.

Gorgon will be generating the revenue to fund all of the services we will need over the next decade, this building decade. There will be revenue to fund schools, hospitals, roads and infrastructure for the state and indeed for the nation. As the Prime Minister has also noted, Woodside’s Pluto 1 project is expected to produce its first gas by the end of next year, with exports to Japan commencing in early 2011. An expansion to stages 2 and 3 of the project could involve an investment of around $20 billion and will generate around 3½ thousand jobs. Again, as the member for Kennedy will know, as a proud Queenslander, there is of course the news of Australia Pacific LNG’s $35 billion plant at Curtis Island near Gladstone. That is due to create around 10,000 jobs. These are all permanent jobs that the member for Kennedy is talking about.

I will come to the important point that the member for Kennedy made as well about electricity supply. The government certainly appreciates the role that a secure electricity supply plays in economic development. He has made a very valid point. I know the member for Kennedy has had many discussions with the Minister for Resources and Energy. The minister sits on the Ministerial Council on Energy. Investment decisions relating to both generation and transmission are not, as the member would know, primarily matters for the federal government, but certainly these issues are on the table in these ministerial discussions.

One reform pursued by the ministerial council was the establishment of the Australian Energy Market Operator on 1 July this year. One function of the market operator will be to carry out a national transmission planning role, which will involve both planning and forecasting and is a first step in what the member is talking about. As we see it, the role of the Commonwealth government is to set the frameworks to allow an environment that encourages investment, and that is certainly what is being pursued through the ministerial council.

With regard to the Rudd government’s investment in infrastructure, as I said before it ranges from investment in small projects, in many cases some of those identified by local councils, to very large projects. In my role as parliamentary secretary I have had the opportunity, as I said, to travel around the country and see how the government’s strategic approach on this—our strategic investment to build the decade forward—is working out on the ground. I will give the member for Kennedy some examples not too far from his neck of the woods—although I know in Far North Queensland they might take a slightly different view of this—because I visited Rockhampton and inspected the Robert Schwarten Pavilion. I was there with the member for Capricornia and the Mayor of Rockhampton.

Through the government’s Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program, Rockhampton Regional Council received half a million dollars and has used it to upgrade the pavilion, which has a marvellous new commercial kitchen with a great fit-out. I was informed that over the course of the upgrade the positive employment spin-off was clear to all. There was a long line of utility and service vehicles outside the pavilion. It provided a lot of local employment. Of course, there is a long-term benefit from this kind of facility in Rockhampton. Because it has this commercial kitchen, the Robert Schwarten Pavilion can now host very big functions. I know that the member for Kennedy will be interested to know that Rockhampton recently hosted Beef Week and that the Robert Schwarten Pavilion was the location for that event because it had had this substantial upgrade. There are something like 1,300 people at an event like that. As the member for Kennedy would know, it is no mean thing for a city like Rockhampton to be able to host an event like that.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It’s lovely but it’s not nation building.

Maxine McKew (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, it is creating ongoing employment opportunities. You cannot run a commercial kitchen of this kind without permanent jobs for chefs and kitchen hands and jobs for people to run the function centre. There are permanent jobs there. I cannot imagine why anyone would be dismissive of these jobs. They are all jobs, by the way, that require training. Clearly, through the government’s investment in education and training, this is again where we have been addressing the important need for skills and training.

Further north from Rockhampton—and very dear to the heart of the member for Kennedy, because he raised this, I remember, during the floods which affected his part of North Queensland—is the $18 million upgrade that the Commonwealth is providing for the Einasleigh River Bridge. As the member for Kennedy well knows, this is an essential piece of infrastructure for the economy of the gulf region. The Gulf Development Road, which crosses the bridge, is the economic lifeline of that region, bringing food and medical supplies, fuel and other goods and services into communities and taking agricultural and fishery exports out of the region. I do recall the member’s address in the House about this.

In January and February this year, as I said, there was immense flooding of the road crossing the Einasleigh River. It cut off communities like Karumba and Normanton for up to 10 weeks. Although basic repairs have been made, the bridge remains vulnerable to flooding, as the member for Kennedy knows. The economic impact studies commissioned by the Etheridge and Croydon shire councils show that about $147 million worth of agricultural and fishery products will be able to be transported along the road annually. Not only is the Einasleigh River Bridge upgrade expected to generate local construction activity but it will also deliver lasting benefits to the community. This is, I would have thought, a timely and sensitive response from the Commonwealth to a clear need demonstrated by the member for Kennedy, something that is going to transform that region, given the weather conditions, and support local jobs while the work is done. (Time expired)

Robert Oakeshott (Lyne, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the intent of the member for Kennedy in moving this matter of public importance. I certainly acknowledge the words of the parliamentary secretary in outlining much of the good work that has been done in the 11 months that I have been here and in the nearly two years that the government has been in office.

In my region, the Pacific Highway upgrades are important infrastructure work. The community infrastructure fund that the parliamentary secretary mentioned is making a big difference on the ground. Some of the fiscal stimulus money can be aligned to infrastructure funding and job creation, and I think that is important. The Jobs Fund that has been established has potential to leave a long-term infrastructure legacy. Regional Development Australia, in engaging local communities in their own infrastructure needs, is also certainly worth acknowledging.

I would probably take a different position from the member for Kennedy about the national broadband rollout. I do think that is a significant infrastructure project. Certainly it will significantly increase productivity, expand the economy and create permanent jobs within my region for the long term. I also acknowledge Infrastructure Australia and the important step of developing a process for establishing priority needs for infrastructure in this country. I have roughly worked out that there is $82 billion going towards infrastructure development and support in this country under the current Commonwealth government. Things such as the $12.6 billion Building Australia Fund, the $6 billion for education, the $10 billion that is really $5 billion—that you could even argue is $1.8 billion—for health and hospitals and the $26.4 billion investment in road and rail infrastructure are all to be acknowledged.

However, I was somewhat disappointed that the speech and the language that I just heard from the parliamentary secretary seemed to be part of a defensive position of a government worried that this motion is some sort of attack on its record over such a short period of time. It is not, and I do not think that was the intent of the member for Kennedy in bringing it forward. Nor is this an opportunity—and it would be incorrect for it to be taken this way—for the opposition to attack the government for its infrastructure planning and development in this country. Rather, this is an important opportunity to express to this House, to all members of all sides, the importance and the challenge of infrastructure development and planning in this nation.

Despite all we heard from the parliamentary secretary who just spoke and despite all the very good work that I have just rolled through that is being undertaken by the current government either through fiscal stimulus or otherwise, we still have a huge gap. There is a huge challenge in regard to this nation’s infrastructure needs and development and support needs. The most recent report by Citigroup into the infrastructure needs of this country was released prior to the global financial crisis. It put a figure of $770 billion out to 2018 on filling the gaps and overcoming the impediments that we have in our infrastructure in this country. ABN AMRO in May 2008 forecast that cost at up to $455 billion. Infrastructure Partnerships Australia in July 2007, when it released Australia’s infrastructure priorities: securing our prosperity, identified more than 160 critical projects in this country and put their cost at around $700 billion.

Taking everything that the parliamentary secretary talked about and everything that the government has done in the last two years, I roughly add them up to the $250 billion that we have in our forward estimates. That is all good, substantial work, but it does not address the huge challenge that this nation faces, and that is the shortfall. If these reports are to be believed—if the Citibanks, the ABN AMROs and the Infrastructure Partnerships Australias are to be believed—we are roughly around 60 to 70 per cent short in terms of our infrastructure needs moving forward in the next decade.

The minister just used the term ‘the building decade’ to describe this decade. If we are serious about the challenge, we are about 60 to 70 per cent short in terms of the infrastructure needs of this country. What has been allocated is excellent and is certainly starting to address the challenge, but there has to be more. It is going to have to come through Commonwealth taxes and revenues, we are going to have to engage the states a lot more effectively than we are currently or we are going to ask a lot more of the private sector in what is an incredibly difficult time in private sector financing.

We have a huge challenge in this country over the next decade, and that should not be lost on anyone. It is not a political point. It is a point of reality for all of us if we are serious about trying to grow productivity and prosperity in this nation. If we do not meet the shortfall and if we do not remove these impediments to investment, the estimate of the Business Council of Australia is that there will be a lost opportunity of about two per cent of GDP, around $20 billion, a year. That alone should be a kicker for all of us to get serious about the motion that has been put forward by the member for Kennedy.

The name Bradfield has been mentioned by all speakers in this debate so far. Only this morning I looked at a photo of Bradfield and his family standing on the Sydney Harbour Bridge prior to it opening. That bridge was built with six lanes, a bus lane and rail corridor at a time when there were 20,000 cars in Sydney. The estimate of how long it would take for all those 20,000 cars to cross the bridge at that time is 30 minutes. It was not built for that time; it was built for today. That is the vision that I think the member for Kennedy, in bringing this motion forward, is looking for from government, from the executive. That is a living, breathing example in Australian planning and public policy of good work, and we can all see that it was done at that time for us. We should consider doing likewise for the future.

Another name from the past came up in question time: Nancy-Bird Walton. She was born in my electorate, grew up in my electorate and went on to be a great aviatrix and one of the great female leaders in this country in the last century. The three councils in my area have plans to expand the infrastructure around their airports. They have all for the first time—which is a hallelujah moment for anyone in public policy—come together as councils to work on a joint plan to try and reach a common agreement on an aviation centre of excellence. I certainly hope that is well considered by government through the Jobs Fund process and that we see a visionary commitment of dollars to three councils that are doing their best to be visionary at a local level.

There is also the intelligent grid network that we are trying to develop in our area. If we are serious about some of the side benefits of the National Broadband Network, we have a proposal before government to engage in some of that smart metering and some of the intelligent grid work. I also think that is infrastructure work and it does make a big difference. Again, I would ask government to consider that from a regional and visionary perspective.

The final point—and this taps into the Commonwealth Grants Commission—is that I do not think that government does growth regions very well at all. This is a comment for right around Australia. Growth regions seem to be the last to get their infrastructure needs met. I would ask government to consider that through the Commonwealth Grants Commission. (Time expired)

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

I commend the member for Kennedy for bringing this issue to the chamber today. It is something that is of great importance to many of us, certainly on this side of the House. The member for Lyne is absolutely correct when he says that this is about working together with government, whether you are an Independent member or even an opposition member, to engage with what we mean when we talk about nation building. The member for Kennedy raised some very interesting points about the priority of some projects. Understand, though, that we are in a situation with the global financial crisis that fell on countries across the world and presented challenges for us as a country to look at ways to give immediate stimulus and plan and invest our way out of the crisis.

I know the member for Kennedy is very passionate about his electorate and his part of Australia, North Queensland. Being a Queenslander myself, I well remember the member for Kennedy when he was in the state parliament. He would not remember but I probably met him over 20 years ago on a number of occasions and I was very impressed with his passion for his electorate. The only thing I disagree with him on at that level is the Bjelke-Petersen era. While things may have been built, our parliamentary secretary did say that there were things that were destroyed. The reality was that social infrastructure did not progress very well at that particular time and, while we can talk about the issues around street marching, demonstrations, people congregating and being arrested, there were also a whole range of other issues. But the member for Kennedy is right when he says that nation building and the infrastructure, priorities and jobs that will come out of this particular investment are very important.

I am now the fourth person that is going to speak about Bradfield. I, like the member for Lyne, also saw the picture of Bradfield this morning in that meeting. It was very impressive. I think there were actually 13,000 cars in New South Wales at that time and they could all cross the bridge in 20 minutes. Anyway, it was something like that. It is fascinating when you look at how long ago that project was proposed and there was Bradfield in his infinite wisdom; the man was planning mad and government schemes at the time engaged his level of vision.

The Bradfield scheme in North Queensland is one scheme that has not got up yet. It is a project that I have always been very passionate about. I do know that in Queensland when the water crisis was emerging for the south-east they did look at the figures. In terms of construction it was a big investment, and it could not be done. It was actually about the ongoing recurrent costs but I think the member for Kennedy is right when he talks about prioritising projects and looking at job centres. The fact is that if you were to build the Bradfield scheme in North Queensland simply to service the south-east, the numbers do not add up, but building communities where water is in situ is probably one of the options that we could look at in future in terms of a brilliant scheme.

Bradfield certainly built the Story Bridge and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Another little bit of trivia is about the Indooroopilly Bridge. It was built probably some 70 years ago now and I suspect that it was actually a private cooperative that built the bridge. The bridge is a swing bridge with large cables. Members who know the bridge may not be aware that the actual cables that lower the spans of the bridge came from the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Bradfield is in everything that we see and everything that we do. Certainly, his vision for nation building was supported by the governments of the day.

I quite often talk about the electorate of Forde and our lack of infrastructure, so I am pleased about the nation building projects that we are putting around the country and the way that they will affect my electorate. When I say my electorate, I am also talking about the region—the Gold Coast hinterland. I also have by default some responsibility for what happens on the Gold Coast. I do know that, as a member of the public, I did not understand why areas and regions like the Gold Coast that everyone thought was doing so well were so severely lacking in infrastructure.

Recently a number of announcements have been made. I am proud to say that I had a lot of negotiation and discussion with the minister to do with the building of the Carrara Stadium. Whether you are an AFL fan or not is not the issue, it is about the jobs created not only in the construction but in the ongoing boost to that community. There is the industry itself and the generation of not only sporting tourism but all the services that will go firstly to the construction and rollout of that project and then will support ongoing benefits to the coast.

The Gold Coast is a nightmare when you look at transport. Public transport is almost non-existent and the roads are jammed. The announcement of light rail for the Gold Coast again creates many jobs in its development. It will be a billion-dollar project by the time it is finished but, essentially, it will take 40,000 cars off the road. When we talk about the impact of that on climate change along with those other benefits then it really is something that a project not only creates jobs with the ongoing positive effect on the economy but also achieves some of those good environmental outcomes.

There is also Tambourine Mountain, which is a beautiful part of the world, that is somewhat neglected in terms of its infrastructure. We are also pleased that the government was able to support a sporting precinct project of some $3.6 million. It is great for the mountain again with positive environmental outcomes but also jobs in building and in sporting tourism. There is also the fact that people who currently play sport or who are engaged in sport have to drive up and down the mountain to participate. There is a safety issue with that and of course the environmental considerations.

I find it really significant that the government plans to roll out $36 billion over the next six years on transport issues. I have used the example on many occasions. Canberra is a beautiful city that was well planned by Walter Burley Griffin, a man of vision for his time. In the period from 1914 to 1920, when he planned and developed the future city of Canberra, he got two things severely wrong, although he did not intend to get them wrong. He planned for the modern technology of the automobile with big roads and big roundabouts while somewhere else in the world Orville Wright was playing with a thing called the aeroplane. So Canberra has two problems: the roads get blocked because we have not planned well enough for public transport and it is very difficult to fly a plane into this place in wintertime. Canberra was about planning for the future and about looking at what we would need in our future. As a government, when we talk about nation building we are talking about future planning. We are not always going to get it right.

I take the point from both the members who have spoken about the priorities and the way that we roll these projects out, but understand the urgency and what we as a government were confronted with when the global economies were melting down and the fact that we had to decide what we were going to do in the short, medium and long term. As the members well know—and the Prime Minister talks about it all the time—70 per cent of the borrowings are being invested in infrastructure, the very projects that we are talking about today. We talk about Building the Education Revolution. It always amazes me when I am in this chamber to hear the opposition find reasons why we should not have gone ahead with our Building the Education Revolution. I am also surprised at the number of comments members get within their electorate offices that something is wrong with a particular project. All I get in my electorate office is praise. This is the biggest rollout of infrastructure in schools ever, and when I was campaigning for the seat of Forde one of the areas of greatest need—and I think our Prime Minister knew this in opposition—was the schools.

Think of the effect of bringing technology into the schools, building the correct infrastructure and providing the jobs that go into that infrastructure. The member for Kennedy said that school building is not nation building. I dispute that because there is a whole range of other benefits as well. It is very much about the infrastructure we provide to educate our young people. We are in a competitive global environment and Australia has done itself proud in the way that it has confronted the global financial crisis. Investing in schools and educating our young people to ensure that they have every opportunity to compete in what is becoming a smaller and smaller global economy is going to be very important. So, when we are confronted with these issues, we as a government, supported by the Independents, believe that nation building is very important. I take the point about prioritising projects, but understand that we have had to act in a way that was going to solve some immediate problems, and the long-term benefits for the country of nation building are the opportunities we provide to our young people and the opportunities that will give to spur on our employment opportunities. That ongoing investment is really important. (Time expired)

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on this matter of public importance and add the perspectives of rural and regional Australia, particularly those of western New South Wales. This is a subject very dear to the hearts of all regional members and, indeed, of all those who live west of the Great Divide in New South Wales. If I look at my own electorate and consider what our infrastructure needs are, they very much come down to water infrastructure to deliver water for irrigated agriculture and productive farming in order to create the wealth that we very well know how to do in our part of the world. The other thing that I look at and see the need for day by day is telecommunications.

I pick up on a sentence that I heard earlier about schools infrastructure not being nation-building infrastructure. I think I can attribute that to the member for Kennedy. Only this morning I received two separate emails from constituents in my electorate whose children go to small schools and who are concerned about the appalling waste of public money in the Building the Education Revolution program. I do not have a copy of the emails in front of me, but one asked whether I as their elected representative had heard of examples where schools want a $600,000 facility and the education department has suggested to them that they apply for $1.2 million. There are other examples where schools are told that they might think they want something but that the education department would prefer it if they had something else, with the result that the cost of the project becomes exorbitant.

As I travel around my electorate and look at the beginnings of some of these projects, I am picking up an alarming trend, and that is the proportion of money costed in the project that goes to consultants, to overseers and to project managers who fly in and out often in charter aircraft, not on regular flights. The amount of money that hits the ground for a school building, assuming that it is a school building that the school wants, is a mere 50 or 60 per cent of the total cost of the project. Nobody likes to see such waste of public funds, and I, along with my colleagues, do urge the Minister for Education to take a close look. I know the Auditor-General is taking a close look at what these funds are being spent on—and I am delighted to hear it.

Today we have had a lot of debate about the possible purchase of Cubbie Station. Water issues matter a great deal to those who live along the Murray in New South Wales, and I represent a large part of the Darling and the Menindee Lakes. We seem to be looking at this from the wrong perspective. The question that should be asked about the purchase of Cubbie Station is whether $450 million is the best use of taxpayers’ money, given that land and water are not disconnected in the state of Queensland. The other important consideration is that those who imagine that you can turn a tap off at Cubbie and turn it on at the mouth of the Murray is to demonstrate the impossibility of this.

Remember that there are flood plain licences in north-west New South Wales that allow farmers to harvest water above a certain level as it flows past their property. It would be a ridiculous situation if Cubbie Station were purchased at astronomical cost—and the federal government should not be in the business of farming, that would never be the case—and the water that flows past Cubbie into north-west New South Wales gets harvested in an opportunistic fashion by the flood plain licensees there. I do not think that the Minister for Climate Change and Water has even thought of that. It certainly should have been considered as an alternative to her purchase of water with Toorale and also the Twynam group of companies.

We desperately need the $600 million that we dedicated as a government to replumbing rural Australia; to actually provide the infrastructure to allow people to continue with their farming operations. That has been snatched away, and instead we have a government which is not interested in the infrastructure that is needed on farm and the upgrades to that infrastructure, but which only looks at a superficial green agenda that says, ‘Add more water at one end of the Murray-Darling system and you will get the same amount of water out at the other end.’ You will not. I hope that common sense prevails and $450 million of taxpayers’ money is not used to purchase Cubbie Station.

It is true that we need to look at how we manage our water resources, and Cubbie is an important part of that. I think there are issues about the amount that that one property harvests from the flood plain and things that we could address but, please, remember there are many farmers in the system and they all need help. (Time expired)

Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am grateful to the member for Kennedy for bringing this matter on this afternoon. Infrastructure is certainly an important issue, and one that this government is committed to.

It is unfortunate but, once again, not surprising that the member for Farrer speaks about schools in a negative way, and the nation-building package and the Building the Education Revolution funding going to schools in a negative way, instead of working with her schools to actually get the best they can out of this funding. I do not think there is any member on this side of the House who has actually had a school—whether they are small or large—say, ‘This is a waste of money and this won’t bring new resources, new capital infrastructure and new opportunities to schools.’ But I am not going to spend the five minutes I have talking about the opposition and their criticism of the education revolution. I will save that one for another day.

I would like to talk about the issues raised by the member for Kennedy. I appreciate the passion that the member for Kennedy has in relation to the north-west mineral province and his area. As this government has already stated in this House, it takes seriously the potential development of the north-west mineral province in Queensland. This includes the development of renewable energy resources. The national 20 per cent by 2020 expanded renewable energy target will roll out significant new renewable energy generation in Australia.

When we are talking about infrastructure, of course we have to reflect on the fact that those on the opposite side of this chamber have, time and time again, sought to block any investment in infrastructure by this government after failing to invest in infrastructure for the last decade. They sought to reject any investment in rail infrastructure, in social housing and in education. I can only hope that right now in the Senate we do not see the same behaviour and have the Senate reject the renewable energy targets. That would be devastating for this country and our path forward, and not only for the reasons that the member for Kennedy has outlined. If we are truly committed to clean energy and renewable energy sources, we need to start by passing this renewable energy target legislation that is now before the Senate.

I do have to take issue with the member for Kennedy on the point about broadband not creating any permanent jobs. I certainly disagree with that statement. I believe that by creating fast broadband across this country it will provide many more opportunities, and will make us more competitive internationally by having those opportunities. I believe the people in the rural and regional areas will benefit significantly because they will have expanded opportunities to work, to actually expand their businesses and also where they can situate their business—whether it is from home or other premises—by having these resources. These are resources that any business, any student, any school and any individual should have access to in 2009, let alone the future. We need to invest in that and, of course, this government has already committed $4.5 billion to the Clean Energy Initiative as well.

I am very familiar with the areas that the member for Kennedy represents, and the areas that he has mentioned today. In my previous job, advocating on behalf of workers, I represented those areas in the mines and in the construction industry. Of course, we cannot ignore those in the hospitality and tourism areas as well. Having been to Mount Isa, Winton, Barcaldine, Cloncurry and Julia Creek, I know we are very reliant on the tourists who come through those areas as well. We need to support all those jobs, and we need to grow opportunities in those areas. We need to ensure that we can protect those jobs.

I am just as passionate as the member for Kennedy about local projects, major projects that we believe should be invested in. I certainly will continue to advocate for a rail project in my area, as the member for Kennedy will continue to advocate on behalf of clean energy in his area. I support this matter of public importance. (Time expired)

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this discussion has now expired.