Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise with considerable joy to speak on this motion. If my father were here, God rest him, he would be delighted that I am talking about infrastructure, because photos of my family life are very much punctuated by images of the sort of machinery that builds roads and developed this country. I love roads. I love infrastructure. I love the Harbour Bridge and what it says about a great nation's infrastructure vision. I am very proud to say that my brothers continue in the tradition of working in the construction sector. They are still building great roads right across the state of New South Wales and employing a lot of people, including themselves, in the construction industry.

I want to comment on a couple of comments that have preceded my contribution today. The first was a comment by Senator Fawcett. He said, 'just recently,' talking about a shift in the attitude of those opposite towards public transport. There has been a change at the leadership level, and I suppose it may get rid of Tony Abbott's backward view about everything public. He tried to get rid of public education by cutting the Gonski money and $30 billion out of education. He also decided that he did not like public transport, so any investment in public transport was simply something that the government refused to have anything to do with. That leads me to comments in the closing section of Senator Rice's contribution this afternoon. I am sure that, on reflection, she that probably did not mean this, but she said that roads are easy to build. I spent one summer as I finished school doing sort of quantity management support on the construction of a road in the Campbelltown region. I can tell you for a fact and from firsthand experience that building roads is anything but easy. It takes an incredible amount of careful planning. It is a significant investment that is of great value to this country.

I take the opportunity this afternoon to acknowledge all of those men and women who are working in the construction industry, building the infrastructure of this nation and improving our lot. I am sure that when they take their children for drives on a Sunday or when they are heading off on holidays, they will do exactly what my Irish father did when he drove us up what is now called the F3 but was, at that point in time, the Pacific Highway—marvel at the engineering, marvel at the imagination and marvel of the hard work that created those pathways. He revealed to all of us, as we drove along, the beauty of the great sandstone that is so remarked upon by visitors who take that exit out of Sydney and come to the Central Coast. I acknowledge all the workers. I acknowledge the hard work that goes into infrastructure.

I want to put on the record today, sadly, not any great championing by this government of a vision for the future but rather that this government has a miserly view of what is possible. That is why the debate that we are having this afternoon is so important. There was a 20 per cent fall in public sector infrastructure spending under the coalition federal government. The Turnbull government needs to catch up on two lost years of support for public transport projects. We have quarterly figures released on 30 September by none other than the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The figures tell the truth that this government will to try run from. The truth is that investment in infrastructure is in free fall under this government. We know that engineering work and infrastructure work being completed for the public sector was 20.1 per cent lower in the June quarter of 2015 compared to the last quarter of the Labor government in the 2013. That is because Labor was absolutely in the business of building, had a vision for the nation, and made sure that projects that for so long had been pushed to the backburners were advanced and delivered with the money and the capacity to move forward.

I want to go to one of those particular projects that are of great importance to the people of New South Wales. I have already mentioned early work on Pacific Highway, which snakes its way north of Sydney. We know that that road's continued development has been a critical part of enabling the advancement of all of those communities up and down the coast and also of improving the capacity of this country to move product around and increase our productivity

We know that, under the Abbott government, the Pacific Highway saw a really significant decline in investment. In Labor's last year in office, $1 billion was invested as part of a $7.6 billion commitment. But in this government's budget, they committed to spend just $672 million for the 2015-16 financial year. There is a big difference there of $400 million. It is a big difference in terms of a commitment to keeping the project of the Pacific Highway underway.

I would like to go through a number of projects in New South Wales that have been subject to the 'Oh, just in case you weren't watching, let's see if we can get away with it' strategy of this government where they pretend that they are funding projects, that they are delivering projects and that they had a vision for projects. This is an absolutely false pretence. In New South Wales, we have the Pacific Highway where $7.9 billion was invested by the Labor government: the Tintenbar to Ewingsdale development and the Devil's Pulpit upgrade. That was a pretty good one. That was going. Things were going along well. It was already announced. But that was not good enough for this government. They re-announced that in a pretence that it was their announcement on 21 March 2014. They must have enjoyed the experience because they have continued the trend. They have continued the deception that they actually had a vision of any kind.

Woolgoolga to Ballina was re-announced on 17 September. They really like this bit of road because they also re-announced it on 22 September and then went back for a fourth bite at the cherry on 28 April in 2015. While traveling up and down the Pacific Highway, making themselves seen in the local newspapers, no doubt, they re-announced the Sapphire to Woolgoolga upgrade. On a roll, the next one they announced was the Nambucca Heads to Urunga upgrade. It was re-announced on 26 March this year. The Warrell Creek to Nambucca Heads upgrade re-announcement was on 1 April 2014. The Frederickton to Eungai upgrade was re-announced as well. The Kundabung to Kempsey upgrade was re-announced on 26 March. And the Oxley Highway to Kundabung upgrade was re-announced on 8 January 2014.

That is only halfway down the list of the disgraceful practice of this government of pretending that this is their vision for the country. I tell you whose vision it is. It was Labor's vision to invest in infrastructure that delivered this money.