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

Building the right infrastructure is critical to national economic development and productivity. To secure the productivity gains that drive jobs growth, you need to invest in roads, ports, railway lines and airports. Most importantly, you need to ignore the electoral map. Governments need to take a long-term view, to take funding decisions based on the national interest rather than on political interests. Now, I know this entire discussion is going to be anathema to the National Party of Australia, because their sole purpose in building infrastructure is to pork barrel their own seats. But what this parliament—this country—needs is long-term planning.

Labor has a proud history of focusing on nation building. When Labor was elected in 2007 we set about trying to de-link the infrastructure investment cycle, which is by definition long term, from the electoral cycle, which is much more short term. Infrastructure Australia was specifically designed as a vehicle to do just that. Infrastructure Australia was established by the Labor government in 2008 following passage of the Infrastructure Australia Act that year. Since then, it has been ably led by council chairman Sir Rod Eddington and until very recently was led by infrastructure coordinator Michael Deegan. In this short period, Infrastructure Australia has overhauled and driven lasting improvements to the way Australia plans, assesses, finances, builds and uses the infrastructure it needs to compete in the 21st century. To date, its achievements include completing the first-ever infrastructure audit and putting in place a national priority list to guide investment into nationally significant projects that offer the highest economic and social returns. And the former Labor government committed to funding all of the 15 top-priority projects identified.

It also developed the national public-private partnership guidelines to make it easier and cheaper for private investors to partner with governments to build new infrastructure. It finalised long-term blueprints for a truly national integrated and multimodal transport system capable of moving goods around Australia as well as into and out of our country quickly, reliably and efficiently. These include the national port strategy, the national freight strategy and, more recently, the urban transport strategy, as well as conducting pilot work on improving governance and developing rigour around evidence based road funding. This is a record that we on this side of the chamber are proud of. What we do not want to see is a reduction in the independence of Infrastructure Australia that helps deliver these outcomes. This is what our amendments are all about.

The first Abbott budget, delivered just a few weeks ago, was largely reannouncements of projects already funded by Labor. I invite everybody listening, everybody who reads this transcript, everybody in this chamber, to go to the Guardian'swebsite to see the shadow minister for infrastructure absolutely nail this in a way that has gone viral—because it deserves to go viral. It generated over 50,000 hits on YouTube and the Guardian online.

A similar video done by the Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, selling the dubious wares of the Abbott government's budget, was not quite as successful. It may surprise you, Mr Acting Deputy President, that a glossy government video which cost taxpayers around $70,000 trying to sell that dog of the budget was seen by only 3,000 people on YouTube. They spent $70,000 for 3,000 people to look at it on YouTube. There were only 2,000 hits a couple of weeks ago when I first raised it at estimates. It looks like I have made it famous. For the benefit of the Senate, that is about $25 a viewing to look at this government's infrastructure proposals on YouTube.