Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I indicate right at the outset that the coalition will be supporting the Nation Building Program (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2009. The bill builds upon one of the best infrastructure programs ever instituted in this country—that is, the AusLink proposals set up by the Howard government prior to the change of government a couple of years ago. The AusLink program is a program that for the first time had a targeted direction for infrastructure spending within our country. However, this bill is principally about spin. I indicate that the coalition will be moving a second reading amendment to highlight that this bill is just another part of the Rudd government’s propensity for spin rather than substance.

There was some consideration given by the coalition to amendments of a couple of items, but we thought on balance it is probably better to let the bill pass through. I am told that, in addition to the second reading amendment which I will be moving and which has been circulated, the Greens and Senator Ludlam in the committee stage will be moving a substantive amendment, which we have not yet seen. We will be anxiously awaiting that Greens amendment so that we can determine whether or not we will be supporting it. I understand from Senator Ludlam—and he will no doubt elaborate on this—that it is about some form of accountability, and we would like to scrutinise it.

I am also minded to support this bill for the reason that the Australian Local Government Association, for whom I have a very high regard, have urged us to ensure the legislation is passed. They indicate that any delay could possibly impact upon payment of Roads to Recovery funding to councils. As I say, because I hold that organisation in very high regard their urgings have a certain influence in them. I just wonder, though, if the Australian Local Government Association, and particularly their rural and regional members, are aware that elements of this bill take money from rural and regional Australia and put it into the more favoured, more highly populated and therefore higher-voting-strength capital city areas of our country. It is yet another indication that the Rudd government is more interested in the votes that it achieves from the more populous areas than in looking after Australia fairly and making sure that those parts of the country which produce the majority of the wealth of the country get some return from the government, in this instance in the form of infrastructure spending.

We come to these debates knowing that the Rudd government have a propensity for debt, a love affair with debt. They have turned a budget surplus of some $20 billion left to them by the Howard-Costello government into an astounding $58 billion deficit in 18 short months—just incredible. We know that, after the coalition paying off the debt of the last Labor government, of some $96 billion, we are now—again, within 18 short months—looking down the barrel of a debt of over $300 billion which some future coalition government will have to pay off. It is fine borrowing money and giving away bribes, one might almost say, of $900 to voters around the country, but somewhere along the line someone has to repay that debt, and the cost will be enormous. Two-thirds of that debt is due to reckless spending decisions by the Rudd government over the last 18 months.

The government are not only well known for their economic incompetence; they are also addicted to spin. As I mentioned earlier, this legislation is another example. The key element of this bill is a name change, would you believe it? It is changing the name of that wonderful coalition program AusLink to a new name: the Nation Building Program. It is remarkable that the government consider using the resources of the public purse, the time needed to draft legislation and the priority given in parliament—we have just heard some pious words about how urgent these things are—to pursue what is effectively a spin issue, a change of a name. A popular and very useful coalition program is to be taken over by the Labor Party by their giving it a new name.

The Labor Party obviously think so much of the coalition’s AusLink program that they want to take it over as their own. It is all about removing from the public record an unwelcome association with a great nation-building program established and run by the previous government. Of course, the Labor Party government have been fiddling around with the AusLink term for some time. After managing to say, during the election campaign, that AusLink was a good program, they then decided they had to change it. They first of all called it the Building Australia program, but the spin doctors, the hollowmen, of the Labor Party decided that that was not good enough, and so on 5 February 2009, in a major COAG communique announcement, they decided to change the name of AusLink to the Nation Building Program. The legislation we are dealing with today is all about putting that into effect.

In Australia during the coalition government, infrastructure spending actually boomed. According to Engineering construction activity, published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in constant 2007 dollar terms infrastructure spending increased from $21 billion in the term of the last Labor government, in 1996, to over $56 billion by the end of 2007. If you put that another way, infrastructure spending in Australia rose from just under three per cent of GDP in 1996 to nearly 5½ per cent of GDP in 2007. So much for Labor claims that infrastructure spending declined under the coalition government.

In fact, it is interesting that a table produced by the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government in its 2009 portfolio budget statement clearly shows that land transport funding for 2008-09 was some $6,436 million. That was, of course, the money that came through from the coalition government. But, in the year 2009-10, according to this document of the department, the spend on land transport will be $4.427 billion—some $2 billion less than what was provided for by the coalition government. So it all makes interesting reading. But, whilst Labor tries to claim the credit for this AusLink program, it is clear that this is a program established by the coalition which the Labor government has taken over. The new funding in this program over the years of the coalition government was shared fairly between the more populous parts of the country and through regional Australia. Labor has put some different spending into this bill—and that is from the Building Australia Fund and is money that was set aside by the previous coalition government budget surplus. The additional funding in the budget statement is, therefore, made possible because of the coalition’s responsible economic management and the fact that we had set money aside in funds for the future.

I will not speak at length about individual issues, suffice it to say that a lot of the Labor Party so-called initiatives are just playing catch-up on the coalition. The F3 to Branxton Hunter Expressway is simply meeting the coalition’s commitment but some 18 months after the coalition made it. The pledge by the Labor Party to provide $488 million for duplication as part of the Cooroy to Curra section of the Bruce Highway on top of last year’s $200 million is only a belated matching of the $700 million which the coalition set aside for the project. I could go through and make similar comments about a number of programs: the Strathfield to Gosford rail freight track or the Western Highway from Bacchus Marsh to the South Australian border. A lot of the projects which Labor are now funding are, of course, state responsibilities, an acknowledgement from federal Labor that its state Labor colleagues are simply not coping and are incapable of managing money in the state area. Of course, it will not be too long before we are clearly seeing that the federal Labor government is simply incapable of managing money either.

This legislation confirms, however, a far more disturbing feature: that this Rudd government is against regional Australia. We already know that most of the new projects funded from the $8.4 billion former government surplus will now be spent on urban projects. This is simply another example of Labor’s urban focus. Senators may recall that the Strategic Regional Program was designed to assist regional local governments to build better transport networks to support industry, tourism and economic development in regional Australia. The purpose of the Strategic Regional Program was to foster partnerships between the federal government and regional Australia by providing funding to worthwhile infrastructure related projects in areas off the national land transport network. The $469 million that went to fund projects under the Strategic Regional Program between 2004 and 2007 went to many useful initiatives, including replacing ageing local bridges, road sealing, intersection upgrades, realignments, widening of roads, terminal improvements, traffic light installation, flood proofing and causeway construction. These are the sorts of projects that occurred under the Strategic Regional Program right across Australia. This could well now be changed, since the Labor Party wants to amend section 55 of the act to remove all references to ‘regional’ and simply rename the Strategic Regional Program a ‘Nation Building Program off-network project’. In other words, the key characteristics of the Strategic Regional Program will cease and funds for this program may now well go to urban Australia, and you can be assured that most of them will.

I wonder whether this amendment is a device to enable the government to raid the strategic regional allocation to fund its election promises that are principally focused on urban Australia. It is amazing that most of the funding that has been set out in announcements so far by the Labor government have curiously gone to seats held by the Australian Labor Party. What an amazing thing, that 81 per cent of all funds allocated go to Labor Party held electorates! We used to hear the screams from the other side in days gone by, when there was a fairer distribution of the money, but I would be interested to see what the Labor Party say about the 81 per cent of funds which go to Labor Party electorates. I am running out of time, unfortunately. I did want to mention the Black Spot Program, which could now again be an area where money does not go to rural and regional roads but is shovelled into the cities, which to all intents and purposes are more favoured in the amenities they enjoy than rural and regional Australia. I have circulated that we will be moving a second reading amendment—not wanting to hold up the bill but wanting to indicate to the Labor Party, and we hope that the crossbenches and the Greens will support this—