Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President, and I can confirm I am in front of my own microphone at this time—and my apologies to the good people up in the office.

I am pleased to make a contribution to this debate on the Land Transport Infrastructure Amendment Bill 2014. As alluded to by Senator Ludwig, the bill seeks to amend the Nation Building Program (National Land Transport) Act in the following areas: continued funding for the Roads to Recovery program, which expired on 30 June 2014—the program will be made ongoing indefinitely, rather than having a set expiry date in the act; the minister will acquire an ongoing power to determine a Roads to Recovery list which is not a disallowable instrument; the distinction between the national network and the off-road projects will be eliminated, and all will be retitled as investment projects; transport research funding criteria will be widened to include research into front-end projects; partnerships and non-corporate Commonwealth entities will be made eligible to apply for research funding; the act will be renamed and 'nation building' references will be taken out; and some spent acts will be repealed.

What does all this mean? We have councils that are saying, 'Roads to Recovery funding needs to come through or we are going to stop important, urgent works', and 'we may have to lay people off'. What this is really all about, in my humble view, is that we have a new government—which in earlier contributions has been labelled 'tricky', 'mean', and 'lacking clarity and transparency'.

If we take, for example, the minister requiring an ongoing power to determine a Roads to Recovery list: previously, the situation was that Infrastructure Australia would have had an open and full consultation. There would have been a complete and transparent economic evaluation of the project. It would have been ranked in the national scheme of projects; it would have had a priority, clear and transparent for all to see. And the nation would have been built to a better and higher standard. But they are not doing that. They are determining what gets funding. They are not doing a clear and transparent economic precis of the requirement for a project, the cost-benefit analysis, what it is going to bring to the nation, or to the economy—they are simply going to do it politically. And there is plenty of evidence of that going on around the country.

Importantly for the coalition, they had to take 'nation building' out of it—because they are not building the nation; they are building where they want to build. They are not building in a coherent, cohesive manner, in accordance with the nation's priorities; they are doing it in accordance with their—dare I say it—electoral priorities. The simple fact that they are taking all funding of rail out of the equation is a very clear indicator that they are not looking at the nation as a whole, or at its needs as a whole.

What I really wanted to do, Mr Acting Deputy President, is go to yours and my—very heartfelt—clear area of some expertise. I think it is really important to have on the record that heavy vehicles are involved in many serious accidents across this country annually; in fact, almost daily. During the 12 months to September 2011—and these are old figures—230 people died from 204 fatal crashes involving heavy vehicles or buses. There is significant evidence linking such accidents with fatigue. Drivers are required to comply with heavy vehicle driver fatigue related legislation which ensures that regular and effective rest breaks are taken during long journeys. According to the National Transport Commission, the size of the heavy vehicle road transport freight task in 2008 was 503 billion tonne-kilometres. This is expected to reach 1,540 billion tonne-kilometres by 2050.

If there is not a clearer indication that we need nation building in our roads, then I do not know where you would look for more compelling evidence. And we have not even talked about the passenger vehicles. We have not talked about the commuters and the millions and millions—probably billions—of kilometres that are done by the travelling public. The whole purpose of investing in our infrastructure is to make the economy work, but it has to work in a safe way. Along with the Hon. Darren Chester, I co-convened the Parliamentary Friends of Road Safety, and there is no clearer indication of the need for investment in rest areas, technology trial projects, parking bays and road enhancement projects than a quick look at the road toll.

Interestingly enough, we have had a very, very successful period—particularly in South Australia, I might say, and a great credit to some very influential and important people like Sir Eric Neal, Roger Cook and the like, who have been involved for many years in reducing the road toll. But we know that there will be improvements in vehicles and, importantly, that there will be improvements in roads. Let us hope that this government does not fall for pork barrelling and make those improvements in roads away from where they can best meet needs—where they can deliver the best result in terms of safety and economic benefit to this nation. We know that these things happen, and they happen with due planning and process. We know very clearly that you cannot portray economic benefit and improvement in safety as red tape, as some in this government are attempting to portray it, like the Hon. Jamie Briggs: 'We'll get rid of red tape; that'll save us.' But it will not save anybody if you get rid of the absolute prudent requirement to plan tasks carefully, to follow them in accordance with the appropriate safeguards, thereby affording every road user the ability to get up and down the road safely, not just the truck drivers but other people. We have had some awful examples in very recent times in Adelaide, such as a continual stretch of road that seems to attract significant road safety catastrophes, with a number of people being killed in recent times.

I note in that debate that the Hon. James Briggs was immediately out there saying: 'We'll spend some money on that; we'll be out there. Whatever you need, we can do something there.' But I do not think that is how the government should run. The government should run on the basis of proper evaluation through the auspices of Infrastructure Australia or the department, do a proper cost-benefit analysis and get the matter addressed that way, not wait for a burning issue and then throw a pot of money at that in an ad hoc matter. We had a nation-building strategy. They are even seeking to remove the name 'nation building'. They do not even like the fact that it had 'nation building' under it. Why that is so offensive to them, I am not sure. But it will not be sufficient for this economy to function effectively and for people to get their right to safe roads—it will not be fair dinkum, if you like—for a government to lack transparency, to put things in the dark. It is very clear that there needs to be investments in rural Australia, and it is very clear that if you live in rural Australia you do not have the many large centres that they have in the city. The argument could be that unless we can weight a bit of funding to regional Australia then all the money will be spent in and around the cities, where the masses of population are, and you can probably do a better business case analysis.

I am not sure that any Australian government has ever been guilty of that. We have built where the need has been demonstrated. If it has been a safety criterion, where there has been a stretch of road that has not been sealed or a stretch of road that has had soft shoulders and has not been upgraded, then all governments have invested that way. So I have the view that getting rid of Infrastructure Australia—getting rid of the independent economic analysis, the measuring of the effect on the productivity of the country and the awareness of safety—is a very retrograde step. And I am not sure—in fact, I will be as blunt as Senator Sterle: I have no confidence that the Hon. James Briggs is a person with enough experience to make some of the judgements he may be called upon to make on a daily basis. Let us hope his department is sufficiently skilled, qualified and able to give him good advice and is able to make sure that that advice sticks, because if we are in the hands of the Hon. James Briggs in terms of economic benefit in the road infrastructure network and in safety in the road infrastructure network, then I would have some concerns. I would think that he may well be taking on a job that is a little beyond him. That is why he should endorse and accept a structure like Infrastructure Australia that does the cost-benefit analysis, does the research, is contestable and stands up on its own. It can be put out there, you can pull it to pieces, you can argue the toss, but experts have come up with a robust model that will, in my view, deliver the right outcome for this nation.

The Hon. Anthony Albanese has been very clear and straightforward on all of this. He saw his task as the transport minister to build infrastructure for the nation. He did not rule in anything and he did not rule out anything. He got the advice, set up the institutions and took action where the evidence was clear and unequivocal to put in place the best thing for the nation. And this government has had to come in and say, 'That doesn't quite suit our priorities.' Our priorities may be different, and I suppose that is fair enough, but you should be able to point to the logic of your argument, the fairness of your argument, the transparency of the argument, the wholeness of it. The first thing this government did was rule out investment in rail. I am sure the founding fathers would have thought that was a bit strange, because I think their first thought was that rail was the way to go. I am no open advocate of— (Time expired)