Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I am so advised, Senator Macdonald. We all live and learn as we move around this chamber. This bill is central to the effective delivery of the government’s Nation Building Program, a road and rail infrastructure program worth more than $26 billion. This program will deliver jobs and critical infrastructure across the nation. The amendments to the act proposed in this bill put in place the appropriate provisions to ensure the effective delivery of a suite of initiatives now funded under the program. The bill proposes changes to ensure the effective provisions for major road and rail infrastructure projects on the national transport land network as well as for projects off the network and the effective provisions for the Roads to Recovery Program and the black spots program.

Over the last 18 months we have seen the transition from the old AusLink program to the implementation of the government’s Nation Building Program. As AusLink no longer exists, this bill updates the land transport program references in the act so that they now refer to the Nation Building Program. It is crucial for the government to make these changes now to ensure that we can deliver our road and rail infrastructure program in the most efficient way. This is a program that will deliver jobs and critical infrastructure around the nation. We want to get on with the job of delivering the road and rail projects this nation needs after 12 long years of inaction by the coalition government.

I indicate to the chamber that we intend to move a government amendment to Senator Macdonald’s second reading amendment. I move:

In paragraph (a), omit ‘regional Australia’ and substitute the words ‘the national interest’.

There is another item I would like to address where there has been serial misquoting. I am prepared to be generous to Senator Macdonald and Senator Williams in that there was an error that they have perhaps drawn from, but I just wanted to correct the record. I want to turn to the Bills Digest for a moment. I wish to draw to the chamber’s attention a couple of errors that were contained in the Bills Digest and this might be instructive to the debate we have today.

Firstly, the land transport funding table 2 in the Bills Digest omitted the funding initiatives for both the 2008-09 and 2009-10 financial years. Therefore, it inaccurately represented the funding totals for both of those financial years. For 2008-09 the digest stated that the total was about $6.4 billion when it should have read about $6.8 billion and for 2009-10 the digest stated that the total was $4.4 billion when it should have read $6.4 billion. This correction would clearly negate the comment in the digest that land transport infrastructure funding in 2009-10 was about $2 billion lower than 2008-09, because it is clearly not the case, given the errors in the table.