Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the report Building up & moving out, a title which in just several words goes to the heart of the issues that cities, both capital and regional, across Australia are grappling with today. I want to congratulate the chair of the committee, John Alexander, the member for Bennelong; the deputy chair, Sharon Bird, the member for Cunningham; all the committee members; and the secretariat for their hard work on this report. Whilst I don't endorse all of the recommendations in the report, I think it is truly a fine example of the work that can be done in the parliament in order to secure a consensus reform agenda moving forward. Indeed, many of the proposals in the report are certainly worthy of support, and I hope that the report garners more attention from the media than it has up to this point.

There is no doubt that Australia has been, for a long period of time now, the most urbanised country on the planet. The national government, if it is going to truly represent the people of our great nation, must be involved in cities, in urban planning and in policies that are directed towards improving the productivity, sustainability and livability of our cities. That must include both capital cities and, importantly, our great regional cities. There is a need to grow regional cities and to support decentralisation in order to take pressure off, particularly, the east coast capitals.

The report makes a number of recommendations. Indeed, there are an unusually large number of recommendations in this report, some 37. Recommendation 1 is for a national plan of settlement. This is certainly worthy of consideration by government. A national plan of settlement, it acknowledges in recommendation 2, must include work also by states and territories and communities, which 'link vertically across different levels of government'. The report goes on to talk about the need for urban planning.

I've told the story of being sworn in as minister in the Rudd government in December 2007. As a new minister I received briefings across aviation, shipping, transport and the range of issues that you have to deal with as a minister. One of the things that concerned me was when I asked who did the planning work in the Commonwealth department I was told, essentially, that there wasn't a planning unit. They had all left. That's why we established, when we were in government, Infrastructure Australia and the Major Cities Unit—to make sure that we brought planning back in, to make sure that the key performance indicator of the Commonwealth wasn't just whether money had gone out the door but what was actually done with those funds. Had it achieved its objectives? Part of the Infrastructure Australia agenda is to go back and make assessments of projects when they've been completed and whether they've fulfilled the benefit-cost ratio that was expected when the project was approved by Infrastructure Australia. And there's no doubt that we can do much better.

The committee recommends support for high-speed rail, particularly where you have the large populations around Australia. What that means, of course, is the corridor between Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. There's no doubt that can be a major benefit to both the urban development in those capital cities and, most importantly, to the regional cities along the route, including Australia's largest inland city, the capital here in Canberra. There are a range of other recommendations that go to making sure that we get better planning, making sure there's a recommendation that the Commonwealth provide support for research when it comes to cities. That occurs in most countries that are advanced economies. They have those sorts of units providing that best-practice agenda. We don't, here, in Australia. We rely upon various think tanks and universities, but there isn't a central body, such as the UKCRIC, that's recommended as the model for it.

Interestingly, the committee recommends a re-endorsement by the Australian government of the Creating Places for People and Urban Design Protocol for Australian cities that was developed while I was the minister. This was worked out with industry. It was, essentially, an urban design protocol to make sure that we got best practice. The key to facilitating a public support for increases in density is convincing local communities that an increase in density will lead to an increase—not a decrease—in their quality of life. Part of that is about urban design, making sure that green spaces are built into any design of major urban centres. It is about making sure that we look at sustainability of buildings, of energy, of water, of all those issues that the government has walked away from in recent times.

There are a range of other recommendations, including that a senior minister be appointed to look at housing. Housing affordability is an issue in which this government, frankly, has dropped the ball. It is good that this committee report is supporting the issue of housing being an important national responsibility. Housing isn't just about building places for people to live. It's about building communities. It's about making sure that issues of housing affordability and the nature of those communities are identified.

In terms of the other recommendations, there is support for smart cities, making sure that new technology enhances the quality of life in our cities. One of the reasons why people gather in our urban centres is because of agglomeration and what it can do in terms of quality of life. And there's no doubt that technology can be a major facilitator of improvements in liveability and sustainability, if it is applied properly. So smart cities technology is particularly important, and I very much support that recommendation. When we were in government, under Brian Howe and Lucy Turnbull we established a process of assessing the planning mechanisms which were in place for our capital cities. This report recommends that we have an assessment ongoing through the National Cities Performance Framework, and that is something that is certainly worthwhile.

In terms of other recommendations in the report, it goes through the importance of engaging with the different levels of government. I say to the government, and particularly to the new minister—they change so often these days!—that rather than talking about the rhetoric of their so-called infrastructure investment that is, of course, off into the never-never, that this report is worthwhile and provides a policy framework. It doesn't provide everything, but it is a step forward. With the governance arrangements, I think it ignores the fact that many of the governance arrangements that this government has put in place have essentially been distractions, including the establishment of the Infrastructure Financing Unit in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to do a job that Infrastructure Australia is tasked to do in its legislation.

But I do commend the report. I think it provides a constructive contribution to the debate on urban policy in this country.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to follow the member for Grayndler, who, in his parliamentary career, has focused above all other portfolio issues on the issue of infrastructure and cities. He is that most dangerous of species as a minister or a shadow minister because he actually knows about his topic in a very deep way—frankly, more than many of the bureaucrats that he would meet.

I will just state my interest in this at the outset. In a previous life I was the executive director of metropolitan planning in the Victorian government. I've worked for both sides of politics in planning, and was mayor of a large metropolitan council. So I have some familiarity with the issues canvassed in the report. To my eye, the report is generally fine as far as it goes; it's not groundbreaking. As the shadow minister said just before, it's a consensus reform agenda. Sure! But the problem, though, if we're being honest, is not the lack of knowledge, it's not a lack of ideas and it's not that we didn't know everything which was written in the report, if we have some basic familiarity with urban planning and cities policy. It's the complete lack of political will to implement good urban policy by this government.

There are a very few members opposite who I would say really get this stuff. They care about it, they're reasoned and they want to engage in the debate. I have lunch with them sometimes in the dining room and we talk about these things. The member for Bennelong is one and, indeed, the member for Ryan is one of the few people in the chamber who understands urban policies and cities. And look what they did to her! Sent her off, killed her!

But I would say that we should contrast that with Labor's proud record in government under the member for Grayndler. He created the Major Cities Unit and produced the annual State of cities reports—which were downloaded millions of times. Labor accepted that the Commonwealth does have a role in monitoring, evaluating and holding the mirror up to the states, local governments and the industry to reflect how things are going. Labor established the Urban Policy Forum, the convening power of the Commonwealth; created the Australian Council of Local Governments; and conducted a review of capital city strategic planning systems. Even in opposition, Labor implemented the shadow minister for cities portfolio, putting pressure on the government. They eventually responded.

Contrast that record with the government's record, and even treading water and doing nothing would have been better than what we've seen the government do. They abolished the Major Cities Unit, they disbanded the Urban Policy Forum and they failed to produce the annual State of cities reports, so we don't really understand what's happening in a cohesive, time-series way. And they failed to appoint a minister for cities.

This report does recommend that we have a minister for housing, because the government doesn't have a minister for housing. When I entered the parliament the only new infrastructure project funded in Victoria was Puffing Billy, which is not exactly a form of public transport. It's a tourist train. They have no national urban policy. When you look at the government's record—not what's in this report—there are a few members opposite who are like screams in the night of common sense, compared with what the government is actually doing.

I know the member for Bennelong has put effort into this report, and I congratulate him for a good summary of decent, sensible urban policy. But there is one issue in there that I know is a pet one for him: the issue of value capture. The former Prime Minister—poor old Malcolm, wherever he is—championed this pet issue as if it was something new, the notion that when you rezone highly valuable urban land it's a good idea to capture a bit of that wealth you've just created for the landowner, who often gets a windfall gain because they happen to own a piece of land that's been rezoned from industrial to residential or whatever it may be.

The notion that you should get some gain back to the public purse, back to the community, instead of letting often thousand per cent windfall gains pass into private pockets is not exactly new. Neither is the notion that if government builds an expensive piece of infrastructure—for example, the Melbourne City Loop—the landowners who benefit enormously from that infrastructure should contribute. These are not new ideas. They were done in the 1970s and 1980s in Melbourne and, indeed, financed much of the City Loop.

It's lovely that the government can talk about these things, but if we're honest about value capture we could also have a look at the record of the Liberal Party in Victoria. Frankly, I think Matthew Guy, the opposition leader, should be strung up before a royal commission for his performance as planning minister on value capture, because in one stroke of a pen he rezoned the whole of the Fishermans Bend industrial estate, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and turned it overnight into land worth billions of dollars. The public record suggests mates of the Liberal Party. The truth has still not been told about that. He gave away enormous sums of money to landowners for no good reason. There was nothing captured for schools, nothing captured for parks, nothing captured for local roads, nothing captured to contribute to major infrastructure.

We've seen the planning scandals in Victoria from the now opposition leader, seeking to be Premier and lead the state, in the Ventnor scandal, and the truth is finally starting to come out. We haven't even started to shine light on what went on in Fishermans Bend, and that's a case that should be told. It's hypocrisy for the Liberal Party to talk about the benefits of value capture, when having a look at how the putative Premier behaved as planning minister.

The report does, I note, talk about the different levers that are available to governments. Of course, local governments, state governments and Commonwealth governments have different roles and different levers. Tax settings is one in the Commonwealth domain. The report is kind of cute—a little bit sad, really. But it does bell the cat, if you connect the dots. In paragraph 8.36 it says the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University suggested 'Australian Government taxation policy, like negative gearing, supports investor activity in housing markets and contributes to affordability issues.' That's committee speak for 'Negative gearing combines with capital gains taxes, pouring petrol on the property market fire and shoving up the cost of housing.'

Other submitters acknowledged that we do have a problem in Australia, where housing is seen as the most attractive asset class, not something that human beings should live in. The smartest thing to do if you're a wealthy person is to walk down the road one Saturday morning and bid up the cost of an existing house. The report beats around these issues. It acknowledges the problem, to be fair; it does include the truth, if you can take a moment to connect the dots, but the recommendations are nothing short of pathetic in that area: get a minister and try to think about it. I suppose that's all we can achieve in the current political environment, but that is a debate that needs to be had.

In my remaining few minutes, I have to touch on infrastructure. If we're contrasting the fine words and noble sentiments in this report with what the government have done in infrastructure and cities policy, you have to say they have no credibility whatsoever. The recent independent analysis from the Parliamentary Budget Office shows that in the current forward estimates the Commonwealth's contribution to infrastructure, measured as grants to states, is falling—projected to fall from 0.4 per cent of GDP to 0.2 per cent of GDP. Yet we hear in question time and elsewhere that the government has a $75 billion infrastructure package. Well, the truth is: that is a scam; it is a sham. There is nowhere that anyone can find the list of what this mythical $75 billion package is. But, when you scratch, and connect the dots from dodgy little press releases and announcements from when Malcolm used to pop up on a tram or in a paddock here and there, you see that it includes things like contingent liabilities to the East West Link. It's not real cash; it's a promise that, 'Maybe if the people of Victoria voted for a Liberal government then we'd give them money for a dud road project,' or concessional loans to the troubled WestConnex project—not real cash, just a concessional loan that'll be repaid, but that counts in the $75 billion.

My personal favourite, from the nonsense from the former Prime Minister, was the $10 billion Melbourne Airport rail link, which he just popped up in Melbourne one day and announced. I actually said—it was during the nominations period for the lord mayor—that if he'd wanted to run for lord mayor he should've just nominated! Funnily enough, I think that federal governments, in planning infrastructure, should coordinate with the states, not just have prime ministers pop up randomly or when they get off a plane and announce a project—as the report says.

I asked the then Assistant Minister for Finance, during the estimates process, the budget consideration in detail, 'What's in this $75 billion sham infrastructure package, and how is it actually funded?' And he could not explain, because there is actually only $24.3 billion of infrastructure funded in the government's budget, not $75 billion. The idea that you can build a $10 billion Melbourne Airport rail link without any taxpayer funding is utterly farcical.

I will finish by reading a couple of quotes from independent experts who have questioned the government's approach. Marion Terrill of the Grattan Institute has warned:

If infrastructure projects are never going to make a commercial return, the government should stop pretending they will. And if they are worth building at all, the government should fund them transparently on-budget.

Adrian Dwyer, the head of peak industry group Infrastructure Partnerships Australia said: 'There are only two ways to pay for infrastructure: tickets and taxes. You cannot finance your way out of a funding problem.'

The report, as I said, is worthy, as far as it goes. It has noble sentiments. But there is no sign whatsoever, if you look at the government's track record and study the budget papers, that they're actually serious about investing in cities or investing in infrastructure. They need to come clean and stop talking about this $75 billion infrastructure package as if it were anything more than an episode of Utopiastyle slogan.

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Schools) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is an important report, and I like to think of it as, in all likelihood, the longest and undoubtedly most sincere love letter the member for Grayndler has ever received! I will go on to explain why, Mr Deputy Speaker Andrews, and you may well be sympathetic to that perspective, and I'm sure you'd be sympathetic to him receiving such a letter.

This is a very important report. It deserves close reading and proper debate in this place and in the community. More than that, it deserves a serious response from government. Whatever the government does, Labor will give this report, the work that underpins it and its recommendations their due consideration.

I think, though, it is important to remember that the report and its recommendations do not appear out of nowhere. It was very pleasing for me to have been present for the contributions of the two previous speakers, the member for Grayndler, and, of course, my friend the member for Bruce, who touched upon some really critical questions about how we fund and finance public infrastructure. These are critical questions for government, and matters that require very close exploration as we try to distinguish between the rhetoric of the present government and its much less impressive record.

In making a contribution to the debate on this report, as a member of the committee, I should acknowledge the excellent work of the chair, the member for Bennelong. I think all of us know the passion that he has for cities and for transport, and it was a pleasure to work with him and to share some of his enthusiasm. Can I also acknowledge the work of the member for Cunningham, the deputy chair, who made a very significant contribution to this report—in particular, in focusing on the needs of our regional cities, a critical part of meeting Australia's settlement challenge, our infrastructure challenge and, indeed, our productivity challenge.

Also it would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the work of the secretariat. I think this is a very important and impressive document, and that it is so is not so much down to the work of the members who participated in the hearings but to the work of the secretariat. All of us in this place know what a privilege it is to work with the staff of parliamentary committees. On this occasion, they did a particularly outstanding job. I'm very pleased to have had the opportunity to work with them and particularly pleased to have the opportunity to acknowledge that in this place.

This report has built together a body of evidence across a wide range of issues that affect Australia's cities and built a body of evidence and a series of recommendations that are a road map for significant public policy change. What emerges, beyond dispute, from reading the report is this: our cities must be at the core of our national debate and be a core concern for our national government. We are the most urbanised nation in the world, if we exclude city-states, but our national government has only intermittently recognised this.

I'm very proud to be part of a Labor tradition—a modern Labor tradition from Tom Uren and Gough Whitlam, from Brian Howe and of course the member for Grayndler—which has acknowledged that this has got to be a central part of our national challenge. We will not be a prosperous nation if we do not have livable, sustainable and productive cities, particularly our major cities, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth—and I should obviously mention Adelaide in this context as well, even though it faces some different challenges from the other major mainland capitals.

Our challenge really is to combine two things. We need to continue to harness the great benefits of economic agglomeration, which are doing great things for many people and many businesses in Melbourne and Sydney in particular, but also to recognise that this presents great challenges. There are challenges that directly impact productivity—and it is pleasing to hear the government talk about the imperative of congestion busting now, but I'll come back to that in reference to my love letter to the member for Grayndler. But the cost is impacting on people's lives, including the lives of too many of my constituents. I don't want to be reading A Tale of Two Cities as a modern-day descriptor of life in Melbourne or Sydney, and that is unfortunately a realistic prospect, for all the reasons that have been set out by previous contributors on the Labor side. This report recognises that national planning is critical to ensure that we continue to harness the great benefits of agglomeration whilst ensuring that our cities remain livable and affordable. Obviously, the focus on housing is a really critical part of this puzzle.

But—going back to the member for Grayndler, as I'm sure he'd like me to—in large part the recommendations contained in this report take us back to the future. They take us back to about 2013, to the sort of institutional framework that the Rudd government had for dealing with cities, transport and infrastructure. And that's a good thing. It's very pleasing to see the unanimous recognition by all members of the committee, members from both parties and an Independent member, that that was a framework that was and remains fit for purpose.

Of course, the other side of this is that we've had five wasted years, five years of refusing to invest in urban public transport until much too late, five years of not continuing to develop our understanding through the State of The Cities reporting and the work of the Major Cities Unit. What is going on in our cities? What are the patterns of settlement? What are the patterns of development? We've had five years of not having the benefit of the work of the Housing Supply Council, and all of us understand what a cost that has had.

So it is really pleasing to see recognition of the importance of that architectural framework and of course to update it. The member for Grayndler touched effectively on the central recommendation in this report, the first recommendation, which is pulled out at greater length throughout the report, of moving towards the adoption of a national plan of settlement and ensuring that this is a cooperative enterprise, pulling together national government, states and territories and local government. It is a road map for the sort of cooperative federalism that one might have hoped could have been a feature of that white paper on the future of federation, which was announced with such fanfare and went absolutely nowhere. This is an opportunity to refresh that debate and to have another go at seeing our national government work together to overcome some significant constitutional hurdles to ensure that Australia's national interests are being advanced, regardless of the differing views and the differing imperatives, too often, of different levels of government.

I think the focus on housing is very important. We need a debate about housing that—as the member for Bruce so effectively put it in his contribution—isn't just about treating it as an asset class like any other but looks to its fundamental importance to how we all live and indeed how our communities function.

The report also has some very effective work that goes to our thinking about how cities work as ecosystems. I commend that aspect of the report to all members, and, perhaps, senators too, because I think these are issues that should not lead to any great partisan divide but are critically important to understanding how most Australians in the suburbs of our major cities are living their lives and to how we can more effectively respond to those challenges.

The work that is done in thinking about the structural role of government is important. I think it should not be regarded as an immutable template, but it shows some deep thinking about how national government can get better at coming across all of these challenges, and, of course, implementing those in conjunction with other levels of government. I am pleased to see the report recognise the good work of the Liberal government in New South Wales in establishing the Greater Sydney Commission. I think that is a model worth understanding and exploring for other state capital cities.

In making some concluding remarks about the report and its significance, I want to restate that it is a very important contribution to an important and vital debate in Australia, but it leads us to some significant challenges in this place. One challenge is a fundamental one: Is there the political will to carry forward the debate contained in this report? Is there the will within government to carry this forward? We've had a number of ministers with responsibility for cities. I hope that the member for Aston can go further than simply talking about congestion busting and look at some of the structural challenges that his role requires be done justice to.

There's a big challenge for all of us, because the challenge of making more-livable, more-sustainable and more-productive cities isn't simply a technocratic one; it's also fundamentally a democratic one. We've got to find more ways to involve those millions of Australians who live in our cities, in particular in the growing outer suburbs of our major cities, in shaping the decisions that determine their lives—the places where they live, the places where they work and the places where they raise their families. This democratic involvement is a critical part of the challenge posed for all of us by this report.

Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also welcome the timely publication of the Building up & moving out, the report of the inquiry by the House Standing Committee on Infrastructure, Transport and Cities into the Australian government's role in the development of cities. I also want to acknowledge the contributions from the members for Grayndler, Bruce and Scullin and their much deeper expertise in these issues than mine and their extended interest in them. I am, however, disappointed in the lack of government speakers on this report, because it is a pretty good report. It's a report with support from both sides of the House.

With Australia's population reaching 25 million and over 90 per cent of Australians living in our cities and towns, urban planning and cities policy has never been more important. In Melbourne's west, the area that I represent, we're at the coalface of the challenges of urban growth in Australia. I've spoken many times in this chamber about our demographic change. Melbourne's west is the fastest growing region in the fastest growing area in Australia. In the last decade Melbourne has added nearly a million new residents and is forecast to surpass Sydney in size and become the largest city in Australia. Melbourne's west has grown at twice the speed of the rest of Victoria. That population growth has meant that all of the challenges that Australian cities face we feel most acutely in Melbourne's west. The committee, in this report, concludes:

The evidence presented to the Committee indicates that Australia's current population growth and changing demographics are placing increasing stress upon our cities and regions. Urbanisation, the ageing of the population and the transformation of the economy towards service and knowledge based industries are causing profound changes in the urban and regional landscape.

As I say, we see that firsthand in Melbourne's west. The committee also points out, importantly:

The outcome of these changes—

for good or for ill—

will depend very much on how they are managed. I draw the chamber's attention to this conclusion, because the last 12 months have seen a series of calls for Australia to respond to the challenge of population growth by drastically cutting Australian's immigration rate. Senator Hanson, the member for Warringah, the member for Dickson and even suspects like Bob Brown have all been preaching from this same hymn sheet.

Immigrants have all too often been the battering ram for our country's problems—for rising housing prices, straining infrastructure and loss of jobs. The committee's conclusion represents agreement that it is how we plan for population growth, regardless of the source of that growth, that will determine what our future cities will look like.

For decades Australia has had bipartisan support for our immigration program. Reforms of Australia's immigration system, emanating from an unlikely source—the newly-elected Howard government in 1996—but then largely being supported and continued by governments of both political persuasions, have dramatically changed the scale, nature and composition of our immigration intake. The creation of a demand-driven skilled migration program at the beginning of the longest period of sustained economic growth in our history resulted in more people in raw numbers coming to our shores than ever before.

These people have made a significant contribution to Australia. The Treasury, the Reserve Bank and the Productivity Commission all agree that immigration has had a positive effect on the Australian economy over the last two decades. Indeed, a 2018 joint report from the Treasury and the Home Affairs department cited research that estimated that immigration was responsible for nearly one-fifth of the growth in GDP per person enjoyed by Australians over the past 40 years. Indeed, it went so far as to suggest that 'migration helped the Australian economy successfully weather the global financial crisis and the slow global growth and poor economic conditions that followed'.

We can put in context the contribution of immigration to Australia's economic growth. It's often argued that the mining boom saved Australia during the GFC. While the RBA estimates that the mining boom raised real GDP in Australia by six per cent, by 2050 immigration is predicted to add more than 40 per cent to Australia's GDP. That's more than six times the impact of the mining boom. This economic growth is a function of the way that migrants have flourished on their arrival in Australia. Contrary to populist arguments, it wasn't Chinese demand for Australian resources that helped save Australia from the GFC; it was Chinese migrants.

Migrants raise the labour productivity of the Australian economy as overwhelming they are high skilled, young and able. They make the budget bottom line stronger and they give more than they take. By whatever measure of economic and social success in a community that you can think of, Australian migrants have thrived and their children have done even better. Across employment, entrepreneurialism, earnings and crime, migrants generally do at least as well as those born in Australia and frequently do much better. When immigrants are blamed for poor infrastructure and rising house prices we need to call this for what it is: it's politicians blaming immigrants for their own failures. The member for Warringah is the prime example of this.

The previous federal Labor government committed more funding for urban public transport infrastructure than every government going back to Federation combined. That was investment commensurate with the scale of population growth in Australia. Chief among those investments was the $3.225 billion invested in the Regional Rail Link project, which separated regional trains from urban commuter trains, significantly increasing capacity on urban commuter routes and constructing new train stations in Melbourne's west. Labor also committed $3 billion for the Melbourne Metro rail tunnel, increasing capacity by 60 per cent on the Sunbury line through my electorate and connecting Melbourne's west to the rail, health, higher education and employment hub in Parkville for the first time.

But in 2013 the newly-elected Abbott government took a rusty knife to urban transport infrastructure investment, withdrawing Commonwealth funding for the Melbourne Metro rail tunnel that Labor had committed and delaying by two years the Melbourne Metro rail tunnel—the most important infrastructure project for managing population growth in Australia—all while the member for Warringah called for a pause in migration in Australia. He'd stopped running and he'd stopped responding to the growth, and he blamed immigrants for his failures.

Despite the obstructionism of the federal coalition government, the Andrews Labor government has now broken ground on the Melbourne Metro rail tunnel on its own. It's heartening to see that one of the committee's recommendations is to 'actively promote investment in the development of a public transport network that is capable of meeting the goal of the 30-minute city'.

Transport infrastructure decisions that governments make or do not make now will shape our cities for decades. Time matters. Long-term transport planning and infrastructure investment must continue to keep pace with population growth. Melbourne is forecast to reach a population of 7.7 million by 2031. We need to ensure that the next big investments in expanding road and rail capacity in corridors of rapid population growth are well in place before we reach the next crush point. In the past I've spoken about the importance of the Melbourne Metro 2 rail tunnel, running from the Werribee line through Newport to Fishermans Bend, increasing capacity for my electorate.

The committee report also recommended to:

… ensure that governments at all levels:

…    …   …

Actively promote investment in the development of a public transport network …

Active transport: that is cycling, walking or using non-vehicular transport to get from A to B. And in Melbourne's west, we need to make active transport infrastructure a priority.

Investments in active transport infrastructure will reduce pressure on our roads and public transport networks, particularly during peak hours. Good active transport infrastructure is about making it easier for anyone to choose to cycle safely or to walk to school, TAFE, uni, the shops or wherever. It won't be the right option for every person for every trip, but more than one in every two vehicle trips in Melbourne today is of less than six kilometres in distance. With the right infrastructure, a trip like this would take just over 20 minutes on a bike.

Many of these trips could be made on bikes, and every trip that is made on a bike frees up capacity on our roads and on our public transport networks. That is why this is a serious mainstream infrastructure issue that affects everyone in Melbourne, and in Melbourne's west in particular. It's not only about congestion either; numerous studies show that cycling and increasing walkability decrease the risk of heart disease, cancer and general causes of death in our community. This means that people not only have a more liveable life but that they live healthier and longer lives. Active transport also reduces pollution and increases an area's liveability.

Despite these benefits, Melbourne's west has a relatively low active transport utilisation rate. This is because we don't have the same infrastructure as the rest of Melbourne. Our cyclists and pedestrians are forced to compete with thousands of truck movements a day on our residential streets. There are 20,000 truck movements a day in my seat alone. In Brunswick, nearly one in every five people cycle to work. In Footscray, a suburb of the same distance from the CBD, it's just one in 20. Why do people cycle at nearly four times the rate in Brunswick, despite those suburbs being the same distance from the city? Why do people cycle at nearly three times the rate in Thornbury as in Newport, another suburb at a similar distance from the CBD? The answer is that if you're cycling from Thornbury you're not competing with 20,000 trucks on residential streets.

People don't feel safe cycling without the right bike paths and barriers. Melbourne's west is still mourning the tragic death of Arzu Baglar, who was struck and killed by a truck while cycling to a friend's house in my electorate. We need investment that increases bike safety and encourages more people to cycle. Just last month, an Infrastructure Victoria report showed that in Sunshine there are around 20,000 daily trips that could happen by cycling and walking which weren't happening.

We need federal government leadership to turn these potential active transport journeys into actual active transport journeys. Cutting immigration won't make our problems easier to solve or our governments better. Instead, we need a plan, as this report argues.

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to note the report from the Standing Committee on Infrastructure, Transport and Cities. At the outset, I would note that this is government business but it appears as though the only people contributing to the noting of this report are those from the opposition. I wonder what that says in terms of the government's commitment to this area of policy?

Recommendation 29 of the report deals with the City Deals program. It talks specifically in terms of:

… developing more sophisticated interactions between the various levels of government and the private sector …

in coming up with a City Deal. That more sophisticated interaction between levels of government and the private sector, from my experience in Geelong, is exactly what has not occurred with the government's City Deals program.

There has been a high degree of dysfunction in terms of the ambitions or aspirations expressed by the federal government in relation to Geelong, compared to marrying them up with what is being pursued by the region more generally—and, indeed, by the state government. If the City Deal is to mean anything then it has to be about a better working relationship, where there is a commitment across not only the two tiers of government but stakeholders as well, including local government, about the overall program for a city. Coming from Geelong, the premium on having coordination of that kind is great.

There are, naturally, a range of competing aspirations expressed by people within our city about how they would like to see it developed, but being able to come to a place of a coordinated single voice, to come to a place of a plan which is also supported by state and federal government, will enable some progress to occur—and the better the process which gives rise to that plan the better the development in the context of the city. That's not occurring right now, and that's why Labor has talked about a City Partnerships program, because city partnerships are about trying to empower the stakeholders in the regions, the local governments, and, in the case of Geelong, organisations like G21 and the Committee for Geelong, along with the chamber and the Geelong Trades Hall, to make sure that there is input at a grassroots level about what the aspirations for our city are.

This is really important, because it's absolutely essential that, going forward in this century, we start building regional Australia. I think it is fair to say in the first century of Federation there have been some magnificent cities built in this country, but if we are to meet our destiny as a nation then cities like Newcastle, Wollongong and Geelong have to be as much a part of the national story going forward as Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. It's not going to happen unless there is this kind of coordinated, ground-up, grassroots development of plans in places like Geelong.

In Geelong, there are a couple of aspirations that have been spoken about and that are sought to be pursued by a number of stakeholders such as the Committee for Geelong, G21 and the council. I want to mention two of them today. These are the sorts of things—and it would be great, if there were ultimately government support—that we as a community would like to see come to fruition. The first is the building of a convention centre in Geelong. Already, Geelong is a fantastic place to have a convention, up to a certain number of people. It's a place which is close to major airports—Avalon, obviously, but also Tullamarine. But there's also a discreteness about having a convention in Geelong, where, when the convention finishes at 5 o'clock in the evening, you don't lose all the delegates. There are restaurants that people can go to. There is a kind of a storyline of the convention that extends beyond the working hours of nine to five.

Regional centres are actually really well placed to hold conventions. That's why Geelong's business visitor economy is already very large—in the year 2017-18 some 363,000 delegates visited Geelong—which represented almost $222 million in direct economic expenditure within our region. But our problem is that we don't have a large space that can seat, for example, a thousand people in classroom style, and, because of that, we miss out on really big conferences, national conferences of national organisations. If we had a convention centre, the natural benefits of having a convention in a place like Geelong would all be there, but we'd have a venue in which we could do it. It would represent a huge economic opportunity for a place like Geelong. Getting a convention centre in Geelong has been an aspiration of our community for as long as I've been involved in public life in Geelong. It would be precisely the kind of project which would be worthy of a partnership between governments at all levels to try and bring, ultimately, to fruition.

The second project I'd like to mention is the Geelong Waterfront Safe Harbour Precinct development project, which has been particularly championed by the Royal Geelong Yacht Club. Geelong is where it is because of Corio Bay. Our relationship with the water is innate with who we are as a city. It's why Geelong was created when it was, and the Port of Geelong is the oldest industry in our town. But there has not just been a commercial relationship with the water; there's been a lifestyle relationship with it as well—a place of recreation. Indeed, the Geelong Yacht Club was created in 1859. It was one of the first organisations in Geelong. Predating that was the first running of the Passage Race, a yacht race from Melbourne to Geelong, which is the antecedent of what is now the Festival of Sails, which happens across the Australia Day weekend and is one of the largest events in Geelong today. This boasts a sporting image that predates the Ashes and predates the Melbourne Cup. It is one of the oldest sporting events in Australia.

The Geelong Yacht Club and its environs are at the heart of Geelong's connection with the water. As the city has been redeveloped over the last couple of decades, Geelong's lifestyle qualities have become part of our economy. People who are living within the greater Port Phillip Bay metropolis are choosing to be based in Geelong and this is a huge economic opportunity for Geelong. But our connection with the water is very central to that lifestyle. The Geelong Waterfront Safe Harbour Precinct development project is about providing a centrepiece along the Geelong waterfront, at the Geelong Yacht Club, that would be at the heart of the Festival of Sails and would be the focal point of our connection as a town with Corio Bay, our connection as a town with the water.

Specifically, it would involve a new wave-attenuator, a new public pier and visitor berths, a redevelopment of Victorian Sailing School, which is a campus of the Newcomb Secondary College, a facility that provides, for 1,000 students across 59 Victorian government schools, an opportunity to engage in water safety and boating education. It would be a redevelopment of that and, through that, there would be an enhancement of the yacht club's Sailability program, which operates for people with a disability, in partnership with 12 community organisations and schools—a great, great program.

It would also improve the public realm. Right now, when you walk along the waterfront, the yacht club is kind of in the way. You can't walk through it. This would connect the waterfront and the Geelong Yacht Club together so that people walking along the waterfront can go the whole way and there would be seamless access as a result of it. It really would be a fantastic development that would help to define the lifestyle city that Geelong is increasingly becoming.

Those two projects are examples of the kind of projects that should find their way, through a collaborative approach, into some partnership between governments of all levels. Were projects of that kind to be done, it would really help in the development of our city, which is an important part of the development of regional Australia.

Cathy O'Toole (Herbert, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no doubt that infrastructure and transport are critical for building cities up so that they can grow and develop with strong private investment from business. Townsville is the largest city in northern Australia and as such we have a great deal to offer to the South Pacific area and Asia, and not only across the three jurisdictions of Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australia. I would like to focus on the infrastructure needs of my community. Unfortunately, what we are seeing from this government is just an array of cuts. We have had cuts to our health service, cuts to education and, of course, we have cuts to infrastructure. These cuts mean less business confidence in regard to private investment, but they also mean cuts to jobs. Last year, the then Treasurer and now Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, cut infrastructure investment from $8 billion in 2017-18 to $4.5 billion in 2021-22. Guess which state bears the brunt of most of the Morrison government's cuts? It's Queensland.

Almost a quarter, in fact 21 per cent, of the infrastructure cuts in 2016-17 will hit Queensland. At budget time last year, Queenslanders were promised $2.2 billion in infrastructure funding. However, the 2017 budget revealed that the state will actually receive only $1.8 billion. This proves that Queenslanders simply cannot trust this government to be up-front with the facts when it comes to actual infrastructure funding. The LNP government have cut funding for fixing dangerous black spots on local roads by $17.3 million. They have cut funding for major road upgrades by $276.5 million. They have cut funding for upgrading the roads that the cattle industry rely on by $20.2 million. And they have cut funding for upgrading roads that connect communities and regional towns across Northern Queensland by $50.7 million. That is nothing short of disgraceful, given that connectivity for those people who live in rural and remote Queensland is of major importance.

But the news actually gets worse. The Parliamentary Budget Office has found that Commonwealth investment will fall from 0.4 to 0.2 per cent of GDP over the next decade. For us, that means more job losses, particularly in the area of apprenticeships for our young people. With all of these cuts, you would think that this year's budget would be different. But a leopard never changes its spots. There's nothing itemised and nothing in the budget for Townsville. I have written to then Treasurer and now Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, twice but, just like the budget for Townsville, I've got nothing back.

Townsville has been very loud and clear in our calls for funding regarding vital infrastructure from the LNP government, but our calls seem to have been ignored in the main. Townsville has for a very long time been demanding long-term water security, energy infrastructure, funding for the port expansion and development of industry. Labor has been on the front foot regarding these vital infrastructure projects, because Labor is aware that projects of this nature will create much-needed local jobs, boost the local economy and increase industry confidence. That is why Labor has committed $100 million for long-term water security, $200 million for energy infrastructure and $75 million for the Port of Townsville expansion project.

And Labor would create a whole new industry in Townsville with the presence of the Royal Australian Navy's Amphibious Assault Ships, otherwise known as the LHD vessels, at the Port of Townsville. This would create new jobs and further diversify North Queensland's economy. Enabling an increase in the activity of LHD vessels at the Port of Townsville would support real local economic development for Townsville by helping to grow the local Defence maintenance industry. The regular docking of the LHD vessels at the Port of Townsville would allow for a continuous program of maintenance work and would be expected to support between 200 and 400 new and ongoing jobs. It would also facilitate important exercise activities, including, most critically, those relating to the joint amphibious capability of the ADF—but nothing from Prime Minister Morrison.

However, I can say that, after 197 days of us calling on the LNP government to match Labor's commitment of $75 million for the port expansion project, the Prime Minister did finally announce the government's funding for the port project. This has also been matched by the state government, Minister Mark Bailey and the member for Townsville, Scott Stewart. Prime Minister Scott Morrison visited Townsville when he was the Treasurer, but he did not commit one cent for infrastructure at that time. Then, after a huge internal fight for LNP leadership, Prime Minister Scott Morrison came to Townsville to announce that he would fund the port expansion project, in the hope that he probably would shut us up. But I am just getting started.

Because the Prime Minister still has not matched Labor's funding on water security, energy infrastructure and the LHD vessels, the clock is ticking away, and quickly. On vital water and energy infrastructure, Prime Minister Scott Morrison is 506 days behind Labor's commitment. That's 506 days where Townsville has been forced onto water restrictions, 506 days where small businesses are struggling to pay their energy power bills and 506 days of absolute arrogance and inaction of this government that Townsville residents have had to endure.

Labor is not stopping there on delivering for regional Queensland. Labor has also announced that we will invest $500 million to deliver a staged upgrade of Queensland's inland road network. This will deliver up to 3,000 kilometres of better, safer roads and up to 300 wider, stronger bridges. Labor's announcement will see an estimated 13,000 direct and indirect jobs created in Queensland over the next decade, along with an additional $2.5 billion economic boost to the regional Queensland economy. Half of Queensland's economic activity takes place outside of Brisbane. Queensland is Australia's most decentralised state. For too long, crucial regional roads have not received the attention they deserve, including the Barkly Highway between Mount Isa and Cloncurry, the Capricorn Highway between Emerald and Rockhampton, the Mitchell Highway from Cunnamulla to Charleville, and the Kennedy Highway between Cairns and Mareeba.

Queensland transports the greatest volume of cattle by road compared to any other state and makes up half of Australia's cattle herd. The industry employs around 20,000 Queenslanders. This investment not only improves safety on key freight routes but also helps reduce the cost of transporting cattle to market. The investment is a big boost for the Queensland economy, particularly regions feeling the impact of drought. Just like every infrastructure project that Labor invest in, we will insist on Australian materials and Australian jobs, and we will make sure that one in every 10 of those local jobs will go to an apprentice.

The coalition government fails the fairness test on investment and infrastructure, and it certainly fails the investment test in areas like Townsville. This is clearly evident when one considers what this government is refusing to fund and also when considering the government's complete and utter incompetence in underspending $4.7 billion on its own infrastructure investment commitments in its first four budgets. This brings the country to a standstill, and it is because of this inactive government.

Only Labor will invest in the infrastructure that regional communities need, and only Labor will invest in infrastructure that will kickstart the country again and create Australian jobs, particularly apprenticeships, for our young people. The facts are very simple: Labor delivers jobs and the LNP do not, because they spend their time looking after the interests of big business and the banks. Prime Minister Scott Morrison is too busy protecting his own job, rather than focusing on and protecting the jobs of real Australian workers in regional, rural and remote Queensland.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to speak on the tabling of this report, Building up & moving out:inquiry into the Australian government's role in the development of cities. My electorate of Moreton is on the south side of Brisbane, less than 10 kilometres from the CBD, and, like all urban areas in Australia, the population is growing. It is getting busier and more congested. The national population is growing by about 1.4 per cent a year, so it's essential that governments invest in infrastructure. We need to be connected, and the people who live in Moreton need to be able to access the CBD quickly and easily.

Investment in infrastructure is vital, and so is planning for the residents of the future and their future needs. That is why crucial infrastructure like Cross River Rail is so important for the residents of Brisbane and those who visit. It is why the Queensland Labor government is proceeding with the Cross River Rail link, which will dramatically increase the capacity of the network, which is currently approaching bottleneck status. Six years ago, in 2012, Infrastructure Australia, an independent body, approved the Cross River Rail and rated it the No. 1 infrastructure priority in Australia. But, sadly, the Abbot, Turnbull and Morrison governments have refused to back this decision.

A Shorten Labor government will help end the gridlock in South-East Queensland by investing $2.24 billion towards the congestion-busting Cross River Rail project. In Moreton, this will mean more trains, more often. It will take cars off the road and get traffic moving. Commuters living on the south side of Brisbane will spend less time in transit and more time doing the things that are important to them. The immense benefits of this project include faster, more reliable travel times across South-East Queensland, including to and from the Gold Coast and north to the Sunshine Coast. It will also be a major boost to the economy, with 7,700 jobs in the construction phase and 550 ongoing operating jobs, as well as the productivity boost that comes with it.

But it's not just commuters who rely on our rail networks to be efficient and fit for purpose. The Inland Rail project, when it is completed, will comprise 1,700 kilometres of freight rail line that will service some of our nation's most important agricultural precincts. It will eventually be one of our most important pieces of infrastructure. Labor supports the Inland Rail project. It is a classic nation-building project, but we do need to get it right. Getting goods to port more quickly reduces costs. Producers will be more competitive. They will be able to invest in increased production, which will create more jobs and economic growth in the community.

But, sadly, Inland Rail is already well behind schedule. Construction was meant to commence more than two years ago. The project route is still to be aligned, and environmental approvals are miles away from being finalised. Of concern in my electorate is that Inland Rail, which starts down in Melbourne, stops in Acacia Ridge in the middle of my electorate, 38 kilometres from the Port of Brisbane. It wasn't until this year's budget that the coalition government turned its attention to the problem by jointly funding a $1.5 million study with the Queensland government. I guess late is better than not at all. But south-side residents are still in the dark about how Inland Rail will proceed from Acacia Ridge to the port. Will it need to pass through the existing tunnels, which would not allow double stacking, or under the existing overpasses? They don't take double-stack trains. Will it impact on some of the green spaces that we treasure in our area?. We just don't know.

A community consultative committee is being formed to gather and disseminate information regarding Inland Rail and to bring the community's representative views to the committee. The views of the community are always important. They are the people who will use this rail transport system. For the passenger train network, if part of the network is in need of an upgrade it can make the daily commute a nightmare. There is one level rail crossing in my electorate. That is not only frustrating to commuters, including pedestrians, using the rail and roads around it but also extremely dangerous. South siders know that it is long past time to find a solution to this dangerous level crossing at Coopers Plains. The Liberal National Party-led Brisbane City Council has previously funded half the cost of two crossings on the north side of Brisbane. But, strangely, they will only commit—not 50 per cent—15 per cent to this extremely dangerous Coopers Plains Crossing. It's one rule for north of the river and another for the south.

Labor at both the federal and state level is prepared to sort out the mess. How? We'll fund it fairly: one-third from the federal government, one-third from the Labor state government—and we just now need the Liberal National Party's council government to stump up their share. I'm not even asking for 50 per cent, just one-third, just like he did on the north side on two separate occasions. Then south-side residents won't have to take their lives into their own hands when they use the Coopers Plains railway level crossing.

I held a community barbecue last Saturday at Tarragindi, just a few suburbs away, but even there residents were outraged about this crossing. They were fed up. One resident told me she needed to use the level crossing to take a family member to respite care for her husband. They were held up for ages by the boom gates at this crossing. She was so fed up and frustrated that she was tempted to park on one side and try to walk through with her husband, who has some incapacity. She wanted to risk walking across the level crossing rather than wait an eternity for the trains to pass. She ended up giving up. He missed out on the care and she missed out on the respite. This crossing at Coopers Plains is putting lives at risk. It's time for the Liberal National Party's lord mayor, Graham Quirk, to treat south siders the same as those on the north side and fund the council's fair share of this crossing. How could it be any fairer than a third, a third and a third?

Infrastructure investment should not stop with rail. Major roads in south-east Queensland are becoming like parking lots during some peak commuting times, with urban areas expanding out from the CBD, Brisbane's urban suburbs now stretched almost uninterrupted all the way from the CBD to the Gold Coast. A Shorten Labor government will invest $1 billion to widen the M1 from Eight Mile Plains on the eastern edge of my electorate down to Daisy Hill. They'll widen it to eight lanes as well as widen the M1 to six lines from Varsity Lakes down to Tugun. These critical roadworks will get the cars moving on the M1 again. For too long, the Gold Coast has been ignored by the Liberal National Party members of parliament that represent it.

The Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison, ATM, governments have had no plan to make our cities and urban fringes well-connected liveable spaces. The ATM project has failed. We need to encourage diverse, vibrant communities. What have they done? Let's look at the ATM government's record. They've abolished the Major Cities Unit. They've disbanded the Urban Policy Forum. They've failed to produce an annual State of Australian cities report. They failed to appoint a minister for cities until 2015, and even then it wasn't a cabinet position. They have no national urban policy. The Morrison 2018 budget had no real investment for policies or programs for Australian cities. They failed to allocate a single dollar of new investment for public transport, despite expert warnings that traffic congestion is acting as a handbrake on economic and jobs growth in our cities.

Labor understands the infrastructure needs of Australians. The former Labor government has invested more in urban public transport than all previous governments combined since federation. Labor created the Major Cities Unit and produced annual State of Australian cities reports, which were downloaded millions of times and were a great blueprint for progress. We established an Urban Policy Forum and created the Australian Council of Local Government. In opposition, Labor has committed to funding public transport projects in cities around the nation. A Shorten Labor government, if lucky enough to be elected, will invest in properly integrated transport systems involving public transport and roads; invest in active transport solutions which connect with public transport, education and employment hubs closer to where people live; improve housing affordability through the use of urban planning, land supply and other incentives; drive the alignment of funding for smart and sustainable urban infrastructure; align greater housing density with public transport corridors; promote jobs growth in outer and middle ring suburbs through direct investment—for example, through investing in research precincts around universities and hospitals, through the consideration of incentives for the location of business and through supporting innovative funding models for local government in high-growth areas. We will also facilitate the transition to renewable energy by supporting urban innovation and green urban growth—for example, net zero carbon and livable precincts.

The future of Australian cities and the urban areas surrounding them is exciting. In South-East Queensland, improving transport links between the CBD and urban areas right down to the Gold Coast will create a more livable environment and provide an economic boost, as well as boosting productivity. So I'm excited for what a Shorten Labor government would do if elected and what it would mean for my urban electorate of Moreton. It would mean better housing, better public transport, better roads, more affordable housing, more jobs and a cleaner environment for our children and our grandchildren. It's time the curtain came down on the Morrison muppet show and that we let a Shorten Labor government start building the infrastructure that Australia needs.

Cathy McGowan (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure tonight to stand and support this very important report. I've proudly been a member of the Standing Committee on Infrastructure, Transport and Cities and contributed to its work. While this report, Building up & moving out, is really important, it works hand in glove with another report prepared by this parliament, earlier this year, called Regions at the ready: investing in Australia's future.Together, these two reports are a really important body of work to shape governments now and in the future on our regions and on our cities. I have been absolutely delighted to be part of both of those inquiries. I acknowledge the work not only of the secretariats involved but also the many community and industry people who helped us do them.

Tonight in my speech I want to talk about a few ideas related to this report. I want to talk about a few of the recommendations in the report and why they're significant. And I, like many of the other speakers tonight, would like to draw attention to my electorate, not so much as a needy electorate but more to talk about some of the amazing developments that are happening in my community and to make the link between how these reports work and how our communities can respond.

What's really clear from both these reports is that the regions are ready. Our communities are ready. Our regional RDAs are ready. Our institutions are ready. The experts in our community say that it's time—it's time for growth, for development, for more people, for more infrastructure. The really important thing we need is planning and a national strategy, and that's the role, if ever there was a role, for our governments. In calling for these reports to be considered, I note that the work has been done and the communities are organised. Now it's for government to come in with its high-level policy.

Let me just talk briefly about my electorate of Indi. For those of you who don't know it, the northern border is the Murray River, and the southern and eastern border is the Great Dividing Range. It covers 28,000 square kilometres and contains 100,000 people. We've got this most amazing freight route, Melbourne to Sydney, that passes right along the north-west side of my electorate. It's the Hume Highway. We've got the wonderful Albury-Wodonga airport, located in Albury, which does a fantastic job servicing the communities. We've got the Logic inland port just out of Wodonga, which provides, on the intersection of the major highways, a rapidly growing industrial area for highways, for freight, and, hopefully in the future, for an aeroplane. So my community is definitely at the ready.

What I would like to talk about tonight is the role that government can play. I particularly want to focus on one of my communities. Colleagues, you might know my community of Benalla. It's on the highway, two-and-a-bit hours from Melbourne, with 10,000 people. Over the last period of time there's been enormous interest in Benalla as a community to invest in, particularly in terms of manufacturing. I was talking to the mayor today, and he told me that, in the next five years, we're going to have over 500 new jobs come to this small community of Benalla. If we have a multiplier effect of 1.5, we're going to have 750 new jobs, which is roughly 10 per cent of the population who will be newcomers. We've got the jobs. We've got the people coming. But what we don't have is the overarching planning or the strategy from the Commonwealth and the state. We've certainly got the interest from the local community, but we don't have it all working together as to how these new jobs are going to be supported with infrastructure. Let me name the jobs: we've got a precast concrete factory; we've got an aged-care facility with 120 beds; we've got Commonwealth investment in the munitions factory that's going to be up to 100 jobs; we've got a hydroponic tomato business—50 jobs up, and maybe up to 200 jobs by the time we get to the fourth stage. So here's one community that's—and there are very many other communities in my electorate that are—getting the jobs and where manufacturing is alive and well. It is interesting to look at the ABS projections of growth for that community, for Benalla: it had a growth rate of 0.3 per cent, but actually it's going to be closer to 10 per cent, so we've just got this misalignment.

I will talk about this report tonight and some of the recommendations in it that would really make a difference to Benalla and other towns in my community. We need a national plan of settlement. All of us are over the cities getting bigger and bigger. We need to have a plan, for the whole nation, of where people are going to live. We need to integrate these plans with states and territories, local government and regions, and all the different levels of government. These regional plans need to explore connectivity with and between regions. We need to develop options for investment, based on realistic appreciation of our characteristics. We need to explore options for local action and investment. We need to explore options for strategic decentralisation of government services, and also for working with education as one of the drivers for growth.

Another recommendation in the report talks about transport networks and allowing for fast transit between the cities and the regions. Let me spend a few minutes talking about how important transport is, particularly public transport, in north-east Victoria. We've been arguing for a very long time with the Victorian government about their V/Line services. We have also been working with ARTC, the Australian Rail Track Corporation, and I'm really pleased that they've come to the party, and the Commonwealth is investing over $235 million in improving our train line between Melbourne and Albury-Wodonga. But we're not quite there yet, because, while we have the investment started, we need a commitment and we need the money from the Victorian government to put on modern, new, speedy, clean carriages. So to Daniel Andrews and your government as you face election: can we remind you about the north-east rail service and our need for quality rolling stock. A commitment would be very useful, thank you—because it's public transport and, particularly, transport with our cities, that really adds to the liveability of our communities. And that's recognised in this report.

There are a couple of other recommendations that I'd like to briefly cover off. One is recommendation 29, which talks about city deals. We've been talking in our sister report, Regions at the ready, about regional deals. In particular, I would like to talk about Albury-Wodonga. Wodonga is in my electorate; Albury is in the member for Farrer's electorate, but that community operates as one. Tomorrow, members of those community groups and, in particular, the RDA, Regional Development Australia, are going to be visiting Canberra for two days and meeting with a large number of ministers and staffers to talk about a city and regional deal for north-east Victoria and southern New South Wales.

For me, one of the most important and useful things I think we could do in our city deals is to bring our educational institutions together. Albury has a branch of CSU; Wodonga has a branch of La Trobe; we've got Riverina TAFE; and we've got Wodonga TAFE. All I can do is just imagine, if we could bring those four educational institutions together into one polytechnic institution, what an amazing driver it would be for growth, innovation and change, and it would do many of the things that these reports call out for.

In bringing my comments to a close, I would like to say that I've been so excited to invest my time and energy and to work with my colleagues on both of these reports. I acknowledge the work of the committee and the various chairs that have brought this to a close. Imagine if we could do what we really want to be able to do. Imagine if in 50 or 100 years time we could look back and see we got this planning right, that our major cities were hubs of innovation and growth and that people wanted to come and live in them because they had the lifestyle and the jobs and they were buzzing places, full of innovation and creativity. I've got a niece who grew up in my local community, near Wodonga. She is currently working in Berlin. She says she loves Berlin. It's an attracter for all the young people of Europe. I say to my niece that I hope that before I'm too much older we might be able to say the regions of Australian, and particularly north-east Victoria, have got that zing and that attraction, such that young people from all over the world want to come and live in regional Australia, not only because we've got the jobs but because we've got the innovation, we've got the lifestyle and recreation and we've got the telecommunications and transport infrastructure that works so well.

So my closing comments to Sussan Ley, the Assistant Minister for Regional Development and Territories; to Michael McCormack, the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development; to Bridget McKenzie; to John McVeigh; and to the Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg are: we need your help now to take the recommendations from these two reports. Give us a quick and speedy response from the government so that we can begin work on doing what we need to do, which is building up, moving out and making our regions reach their potential.

Debate adjourned.