Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to 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.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What does it have to do with the bill?

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

I know this is only a small example—and I will take that interjection from Senator Macdonald, who gave a stunning critique of this government's budget in this chamber from that very seat only last week. It is a small example of the government's spending not being as well directed as it should be.

What we also found out during the estimates process was that the handful of new projects announced have not been assessed by Infrastructure Australia. That is right—the announcements made by the federal government in the last budget were never assessed by the very body set up to assess these types of projects. Yet billions of taxpayer dollars have already been committed by the Abbott government.

In the case of East West Link stage 2, a road project in my home state of Victoria, the money will be out the door by the end of next week, pushed off to the Victorians, even though the project is not due to start for another 18 months. They are going to have $1 billion or so 18 months in advance of the project actually starting. This is a project that Infrastructure Australia has not even assessed as being ready to proceed. There is not a starker example of why we need to make Infrastructure Australia an essential element of our decision making than this one.

In fact, I asked the officers from Infrastructure Australia at the table during estimates, 'Have you received any information from the Victorian government yet?' They said, 'Only the most high-level.' I said, 'I am from Victoria. I have read a lot about East West Link 2. Can you identify for me yet where the tunnel is going to come out?' They have actually started funding a tunnel for which they know where they are going to start digging but do not know where they are going to have it come up. I have never heard such an absurd example of pork barrelling to help a flailing and failing state government than funding and building one end of a tunnel when you do not know where the tunnel is going to come up. Seriously? They have sent $1 billion out the door 18 months before it is even scheduled to commence. They do not know where the tunnel is going to come up. It is just extraordinary.

But it is no surprise the lengths to which this government will go to prop up its failing state governments. That, more than anything else, goes to the core of why this government's original bill should be rejected. It is a bill that attempted to gut the independence of Infrastructure Australia, to make it compliant to the minister's wishes, to make it ignore its own research and to make it ignore its own results. That is why the amendments that are being put forward today are so vital. These amendments that Labor is putting forward to this bill and the Land Transport Infrastructure Amendment Bill seek to deliver that independence and maintain it. These amendments enhance Infrastructure Australia. They deliver independence and transparency and embed Infrastructure Australia as a key pillar in deciding how the scarce Commonwealth infrastructure dollars are spent.

This is like a wooden cross to a vampire when it comes to the National Party of Australia. Their entire reason for existing is to be able to say to their constituents, 'Don't worry about all the things that the Abbott government are doing to pensions. Don't worry about all those things they are doing to rural kids who want to go to university. We've got a promise to build a road through the middle of the electorate, even though it has not been assessed or has failed assessment.' That is what this is really about. It is about a culture in the National Party, and tragically occasionally among some rural Liberals, where they think that if they can just build a road they can convince their electors to not notice a cut in pensions, increasing taxes on petrol or the cost of university education for regional kids going up. That is all this bill is about—the business-as-usual pork barrelling of the Nationals and rural and regional members of the Liberal Party. As Senator Macdonald frequently tells us in this chamber, there are more of those rural and regional Liberals then there are Nationals. Unfortunately, that is a disease that has crept in, too—competitions to see who can pork barrel their electorates the most.

What have we seen in the way of consultation when it comes to this government's bill? The evidence of the Senate inquiry into this bill is that the department drew up drafting instructions based on the new government's election policy and discussions in the minister's own office. There was no formal consultation on the detail of the bill prior to its introduction with any stakeholders outside of the government. No formal consultation took place with interested parties such as Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, the Business Council of Australia, the Urban Development Institute or the Tourism and Transport Forum. They did not even talk to their usual business mates. Indeed, the government did not formally consult on the detail of the bill with Infrastructure Australia or the Infrastructure Coordinator. So they ignored every single possible source of advice that they could because they knew what they were up to. They knew they intended to gut the independence of this organisation because it would not bend to their will and give $1 billion 18 months in advance for a road and tunnel in Melbourne that they do not even know where it is coming up yet. There is no way that would pass the smell test—except the smell test of a dying Liberal government in Victoria.

Many other organisations were also not consulted on this bill. That is evident from the written submissions. Given the criticism that this bill has received—broad criticism across the whole business community—it is clear that the government would have been better advised to have sought detailed input via an exposure draft process at the very least. There is scant evidence that the coalition's election policy was a guide—this bill is in no way a reflection of the policy outlined in its documents. It is another Liberal lie: 'Here is our election promise, and here is the bill that meets our election promise.' Tragically, they are not even close to each other. Just as in so many other areas, this is a bill full of broken promises.

This government has been dragged kicking and screaming to a position long advocated by Labor. Those opposite will be supporting many of Labor's amendments because this bill is so bad that even the Business Council of Australia criticised it. The bill as it was originally set out sought to change the governance of Infrastructure Australia by changing its corporate character and lines of reporting, fleshing out its functions and eliminating others. Of greater concern, however, was its plan to enhance the minister's explicit powers to direct Infrastructure Australia's operations—that is right, history repeating itself with a National Party minister wanting the power to tell them what to do. As I have already mentioned on a couple of occasions, Infrastructure Australia would not pass $1 billion 18 months in advance to a state government that had submitted no plans and did not even know where the tunnel would come up.

Without the amendments put up by the opposition and now adopted by the government, this bill would have allowed the minister to exclude whole classes of projects from evaluation—for example, public transport. The bill in its original form would have been highly corrosive of the independence of Infrastructure Australia, whose primary role is to provide expert advice to government. The amendments the government will shortly move to its own bill will remove proposed significant extra powers for the minister to direct the inputs to its advice to government. The opposition still has concerns that transparency is being reduced, because there is no legislative commitment to publish evaluations or evidence relied upon to make decisions. So they are still not prepared to be transparent; they still want to try to put the fix in. They still want to dole out road funding based on their electoral needs, not based on the national interest. You may think who cares, but they put out an election document that said they promised to have the transparency this time, hand on heart—'We promise to be more transparent than perhaps we have been in the past.' Yet, again, we have another Abbott government broken promise; another Liberal lie.

These issues remain as serious defects in the bill, and most will have the effect of reducing confidence in Infrastructure Australia. We must do everything we can to ensure that Infrastructure Australia remains an independent adviser to government. We must do everything we can to ensure that its advice is public and independent rather than allow everything to be done at the direction of the government and behind closed doors. If Senator Macdonald is going to be truthful, he will stand up here and tell us about the number of times he has been dudded so that the government can look after National Party electorates and National Party mates. They are legion. If he is going to show the honesty he showed last week in his criticism of the budget, he will stand up here and list the times he has been dudded when campaigning for his constituents of Queensland by National Party pork-barrelling, to the detriment of the people of Queensland.

Although we note the government has taken up many of the opposition's amendments, further amendments are still needed to improve this bill. In particular, we would change the bill so that the board determines the Infrastructure Australia corporate plan, not the minister—just like several other CAC Act bodies. We would also enhance transparency by ensuring public disclosure of evaluated projects, infrastructure plans and cost-benefit ratios through legislation. Importantly, we would keep Infrastructure Australia's role to provide policy advice on the impact of climate change on infrastructure projects. This means explicitly mandating important work such as bridge heights, road construction standards, port development and transport modes. The exclusion of climate change policy advice is further evidence that this government, at its heart, has failed to come to terms with the fact that climate change is real and has broad impacts on our environment and on our infrastructure as a result. Bridge heights, port planning, transport use, energy use, rainfall patterns and more extreme weather events all have impacts on infrastructure planning and they must remain part of sensible advice to government. I know former minister Albanese was a big supporter of smart infrastructure, and I am sure smart infrastructure should be part of the consideration of this bill. I am sure former minister Albanese will be keeping a weather eye on these developments. Infrastructure Australia would take on a new function—promoting public awareness of its functions. Finally, we would retain the income tax offset program for designated infrastructure projects as a decision made by Infrastructure Australia. This would keep decisions on significant income tax benefits to project proponents close to those tasked with recommending national infrastructure projects.

Under the last Labor government, overall national infrastructure and capital spending as a share of GDP went to No. 1 of the dozens of nations in the OECD, after languishing for years. Labor lifted Commonwealth infrastructure funding from $132 to $225 per Australian. As the Productivity Commission recently showed, public sector spending on infrastructure projects topped two per cent of GDP every year under the federal Labor government, after touching only one per cent under John Howard in 2003. Labor has a great record of infrastructure delivery. Labor created Infrastructure Australia to research and rank proposed projects; we gave it independence and we based the potential for yes or no on national economic productivity. Senator Macdonald knows a lot about infrastructure, but he did promise me once he would get an airport terminal named after me and as always, being dudded by the National Party, he failed to deliver. But I wish him good luck with his contribution. (Time expired)

Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Conroy probably could have used another 10 minutes; he was just getting on a roll. I am very pleased to be speaking on this bill today. The Senate is debating a bill that will ultimately impact upon every single one of us, whether we live in cities or towns; whether we expect a high standard of service delivery in energy, transport, water and telecommunications; or whether we've long since given up hope. Despite the fact that only a tiny fraction of Australians will probably ever know that this bill is even up for debate, the way this vote plays out will have consequences far beyond this chamber.

Before I get into the detail of the bill the government has presented us with, I want to take a step back and ask what the government means when it talks about infrastructure. In the course of this debate that word is going to get thrown around a lot and, as usual, will be made to sound tedious, technocratic and politically neutral. To most of us infrastructure is invisible by design—the mesh of ducts and pipes unseen beneath city streets, or hidden in plain sight like the electricity distribution grid, so ubiquitous that we no longer even see it. In the industrialised world, this ubiquity and reliability means that infrastructure is unspoken, is taken for granted and is basically extremely boring—until the moment it breaks. At the point that the server goes down, or the water main blows a hole in the street, or the big one—the moment when the electricity grid goes dark without warning and winds the clock back a century—infrastructure suddenly becomes very visible, and overwhelmingly interesting, life or death interesting.

These inconceivably complex overlays of tarmac, glass fibre and pipework are in important ways the very definition of what it means to be an urban, and urbanising, species. In the industrialising world, they are not in the least taken for granted: supplies of fresh water and electricity to the vast informal settlements on the periphery of the great cities of the global south range from intermittent or improvised to completely out of reach. Secure and affordable housing is perhaps the most intimate form of infrastructure. Its degree of connectivity to the extended circulatory systems of power, water, transport and telecommunications is used the world over as shorthand for degrees of modernity and civilisation.

In this most abundantly wealthy of nations, what are we to make of the knowledge that there are Aboriginal communities in the Western Desert in which no new houses can be built to relieve chronic overcrowding, even though there is funding available for it, because the obsolete electricity generators are too underpowered to handle any increase in the load? Should we query why inner urban communities share close proximity to public transport, fast telecommunications and health and education services while outer metropolitan and regional communities struggle to maintain even basic standards of service provision?

Infrastructure in Australia, as anywhere else, is deeply political. It involves tens of billions of dollars in construction and maintenance contracts; monopoly rents from power plants and other utilities; freight rail lines that swing right by your coal mine or light rail lines that run past your shopping centre; and, slowly but surely, expanding citywide traffic jams that are gradually paralysing whole communities. This unsustainable traffic congestion is exploited with private toll roads and closing alternative routes, as has happened here in Australia. Infrastructure is political. The politics of infrastructure is the difference between a train that arrives every four minutes and a bus that arrives every four hours. It is the difference between ready proximity to services, schools and hospitals, or being stranded over the horizon, far from friends, family and a job. And it is the difference between infrastructure provision for the widest public benefit versus narrow private interests.

What are we to make of the bill that the government lands on us today? The bill proposes reforms to Infrastructure Australia to give effect to the Prime Minister's pre-election commitment to abolish Commonwealth funding to every public transport project in the country. There will be no public transport under a government I lead, the Prime Minister has effectively declared—and it is one of the few pre-election commitments he has decided to keep. It has killed the Brisbane Cross River Rail project. It has stalled the pre-feasibility work that was going into the Melbourne Metro, and we can kiss goodbye any expansions to Sydney's commuter rail network. It ripped half a billion dollars out of the Perth light rail project, giving the Barnett government the excuse it needed to delay the project by five years or more. The east coast high-speed rail studies will presumably now get shelved to collect dust with all the other high-speed rail studies. That means talented planning and project teams are walking out of the door right around the country at the stroke of a pen, killing projects that our suburbs and regional communities desperately need.

I think it is fair to say that this Prime Minister has something of a freeway fetish. In April 2013, from opposition, he took a doorstop in Frankston and said this:

Now the Commonwealth government has a long history of funding roads. We have no history of funding urban rail and I think it's important that we stick to our knitting, and the Commonwealth's knitting when it comes to funding infrastructure is roads.

Knitting—how quaint! Commonwealth infrastructure policy described by using interpretive handcraft metaphors. It gets better. This is from January 2013, again from opposition:

Better roads mean better communities…

The then opposition leader said:

They're good for our physical and mental health. They're even good for our environment because cars that are moving spew out far less pollution than those that are standing still.

So there you have it. National mental health policy just needed a good solid concrete pour for a new urban freeway.

To give legislative effect to this embarrassing and counterproductive delusion, the government had proposed to gut the independence of the Commonwealth's only, and certainly most authoritative, infrastructure advisory body—Infrastructure Australia. The original proposal was to allow ministers to be able to compel Infrastructure Australia to assess particular pet projects. The government also wanted to be able to preclude IA from assessing whole categories of projects, to prevent them from spreading their seditious opinions on the public benefits of cycling infrastructure or public transport. We could refer to it as the 'stick to your knitting' amendment.

Keep in mind that Infrastructure Australia's processes are not determinative. This is an advisory body we are talking about. All it does is evaluate the projects that states and territories put forward to it and assemble them into a national priority list—prioritising projects it believes offer the best value for the Commonwealth's scarce capital. IA's processes are not perfect and, when we get to the committee stage, I will go into more detail about my strong concerns about how cost-benefit analysis factors are used and abused to artificially inflate the value of some projects and kill off others. The main thing to keep in mind is that IA processes are an attempt to assess infrastructure funding without politicians in the room demanding that marginal seats should all get concrete poured on them. The final decision about which projects actually get funded rests with the executive.

Exhibit A of this quite important fact—that IA is no more or less than an expert advisory body—is the Commonwealth's postelection infrastructure commitments and determinations. None of them come from IA's priority list, and the spending favours seats held by—guess what—members of the Abbot government, Liberal and National seats, by three to one. What a remarkable coincidence—75 per cent or more. How about that? That is why you need independence. That is why you need an expert in the room to keep the politicians and the politics at arm's length—which is not what we are getting. It also underlines the fact that, no matter what this chamber does with this bill and no matter how much surgery we perform to improve it and send it back to the House of Representatives, the Abbott executive is still entirely free to ignore everything we say and to cherry pick their own projects. Something obviously has to give.

As you can imagine, my first instinct was to advise my Greens colleagues to vote against this atrocity. We thought it might be worth, however, drafting amendments to see whether it could be fixed or even, heaven forbid, improved. The opposition amendments that Senator Conroy foreshadowed do go some of the way. Our amendments go some of the way—I will talk a bit more about that in a moment and at greater length when we get to the committee stage. But the icing on this particular bit of black humour from the Abbott government was the government's own amendments—because they basically invert or gut the purpose of the bill. It is remarkable. We will see how this plays out when we get to the committee stage. It may be that the Greens will support the bill when all the amendments are finally worked through—on the basis of the fact that the Abbott government itself appears to be in the process of circulating amendments that would fix some of the dopiest features of the bill. That is interesting.

Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss announced this extraordinary step the other day—and let us pay credit; if he is listening to the evidence, that is what we hope governments will do. He said on Wednesday that the government wanted to clear up 'ambiguities' about planned changes to Infrastructure Australia which had led to a 'misunderstanding' that its intention was to make the body less independent. No, I think we understand perfectly well what the government is attempting to do. Once we have had a chance to take a look at Minister Truss's amendments, it may be that that 'misunderstanding' is in fact cleared up and the bill can proceed. We will see.

The Greens, I foreshadow now, will be moving amendments to put the topic of climate change back on Infrastructure Australia's desk. Can you imagine the mentality of the person, sitting behind the scenes somewhere, who wanted to strike any mention of climate change from Infrastructure Australia—from an advisory body. It does not even force the Abbott government to appear to care about climate change, but it at least says the expert advisory body should pay attention to the impacts of climate change on infrastructure—infrastructure along our coastlines that is getting chewed away, infrastructure that is exposed to increased incidence of bushfires.

Climate change is going to kill people—in heatwaves. The government recently took out the Major Cities Unit, firing everybody that was providing expert advice on the future of Australian cities. It was a reasonably important entity, one would have thought—and kudos to the former Rudd government for setting it up in the first place. Given that we are one of the most heavily urbanised countries in the world, you would think maybe we need some Commonwealth expertise on city policy. Before the unit was bowled over, however, the last State of Australian cities report said that heat deaths in Australian cities would double by 2050, apart from in Queensland and Perth, where they will quadruple. It is real whether you think it is absolute crap or not. The Greens will be moving to bring climate change back within the remit of Infrastructure Australia. It will be remarkably galling for the government to have to accept the amendments to put climate change back in—because we know that a substantial fraction of their executive does not believe that it is happening at all. How nice that must be for them!

The first draft of this bill should clearly never have seen the light of day. I very much look forward to turning it into something readable and into something that may go some way towards improving service delivery and infrastructure provision to communities that desperately need it.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a debate on a bill that has been through the House of Representatives. The Infrastructure Australia Amendment Bill 2013 has now come to the Senate and it will be amended by the government here. As part of the debate, it behoves me to refer to some of the previous speakers. I will start with the most recent, the representative of the Greens. As is usual with the Greens, Senator Ludlam put forward two fallacies or dishonesties. Senator Ludlam said with great gusto that there are three times as many infrastructure proposals in seats held by Abbott government members as there are in other seats. I invite Senator Ludlam to have a look at the number of seats held by members of the Abbott government in this parliament and compare it to the number held by others. Whilst the numbers may not precisely correspond, it is certainly very much the case that, clearly, more of the infrastructure will be in seats held by Abbott government members—because so many more of the seats are held by Abbott government members.

Secondly, there is something the Greens never understand in their fascination with urban public transport—and I must say that I support urban public transport. Where I live—and in many of the places where the people I represent live—there is no tram down the end of the street, there is no regular public bus service and there is no urban rail system. The only means of transport in many parts of Australia is the private motor vehicle, hence the need for road transport infrastructure in those areas—and, I might add, the need for very careful consideration before increasing the cost of fuel in whatever way.

If you needed a demonstration of how lightly Labor treats this whole subject, and what a dearth of ideas they have on the subject of infrastructure, I refer you to the speech by the first Labor speaker on this matter, my good friend Senator Conroy. I always love following Senator Conroy, because it is always entertaining when he speaks, regardless of the fact that what he says is so insignificant as not to warrant anyone listening to it—anyone apart from me, I suspect. Senator Conroy said that all of these projects being implemented by the coalition were funded by Labor. Sorry, Labor hardly funded anything, I have to tell you. Those that it did fund it did so on borrowed money, which has now led us to the debt crisis Australia is currently experiencing. Senator Conroy's principal speech seemed to be relating to us how many YouTube hits there were on something Mr Albanese put out versus something that the Abbott minister put out. How could having a long discourse on how many hits you get on a YouTube video possibly be relevant to the question of infrastructure in Australia?

It just shows bereft of any serious consideration of infrastructure the Labor Party is. Then, as my colleagues indicated by interjection, fancy Senator Conroy, of all people, talking about starting somewhere and finishing somewhere and not doing any of the work on the in-between bit, when there is the guy who, on the back of an envelope, initiated the most expensive piece of infrastructure ever in Australia's history. And all Senator Conroy had, apart from some rhetoric, was a start and a finish, with nothing in-between about how he would get either the start or the finish right.

Senator Conroy continues to try to make divisions between the National and Liberal parties, but I have to tell him that, sadly for you, Senator Conroy, that does not happen. When it comes to infrastructure and nearly everything the Liberal and National parties in this place are at one, and of course in my own state of Queensland we are one. But just to refute Senator Conroy's observation of pork-barrelling, as he calls it, I have to say to him that some of the infrastructure that is most important in my state of Queensland—the Bruce Highway—traverses many electorates. They are mainly coalition seats because quite frankly very few seats in Queensland are held by the Australian Labor Party. So it would be difficult to find where there are major expenditures in Labor seats, not because there is pork-barrelling, but because there are no Labor seats. One of the few Labor seats contains the Ipswich Motorway, which is an infrastructure project being continued by this government and was of course started by the Howard coalition government.

For Senator Conroy's benefit can I say that some of the major infrastructure matters I continually urge governments to look at seriously are the Hann Highway and the Mt Isa road and rail line, both of which are not in the electorates of any coalition member, but in the electorate of an Independent. It is a seat that will become a coalition seat after the next election. It is one where the coalition candidate received some 10,500 more primary votes than the current incumbent, but saved it on Labor and Palmer United preferences. That is a seat that will have a coalition member at the next election, and it will be a coalition member who can argue for the absolutely essential infrastructure that is needed in that important part of our country, which provides links between the north and the south of our nation—that is, along the Hann Highway. The Mt Isa road and other roads in that area are desperately in need of further investment. They are important investments, because that is the part of the world that contributes so significantly to Australia's economic wellbeing. It is where most of the minerals on the eastern side of the content come from and it also is the place that supports significant rural industries, like the live cattle industry, which was such an economic fillip, prior to the senseless ban by the Labor government.

From hearing Senator Conroy it would seem that he has not read the bill and certainly has not read the government amendments, because what he was saying was entirely contradictory on what the proposal actually says. Senator Conroy asked me to list the number of times that Queensland—I am not sure who he meant, but let us say Queensland—was dudded by National Party pork-barrelling. It will not take me more than half a second to give you that list, because there is nothing in the list. There are no instances I can think of. But if he asked me to list the number of times the Labor Party has dudded Queensland in relation to infrastructure, it would take more than the 20 minutes allowed to me in this speech.

I want to refer now to some of the matters in the speech. First, I think that over the years since its establishment Infrastructure Australia has done a very good job. I am particularly praiseworthy of Mr Michael Deegan, the original CEO of Infrastructure Australia. I spent a lot of time questioning Mr Deegan at estimates. He always turned up and gave very good and full answers. He did not need a team of assistants to help him answer reasonable questions. I had a lot of confidence in the work that Infrastructure Australia had done right around the country, particularly in my home state of Queensland. I wish Mr Deegan well in his future. I thought the work Mr Deegan and his team did was excellent.

Clearly any infrastructure organisation can be improved, and I believe that these amendments by the coalition do improve particular Infrastructure Australia processes. I congratulate Mr Truss on having the courage to take these amendments and reforms through. Indeed, Warren Truss is showing himself to be a very courageous and innovative member. He is well across his portfolio and the work he has already done in civil aviation and infrastructure to date is a wonderful example of what a good government can do, that is, a government that is functional and understands the value that needs to be obtained from money.

The coalition's amendments will enhance Infrastructure Australia's existing functions to include conducting evidence-based audits of Australia's current infrastructure asset base, in conjunction and collaboration with state and territory governments. These will be revised every five years. Infrastructure Australia will develop a 15-year infrastructure plan for Australia, with this plan being revised regularly as well. All projects seeking Commonwealth funding of more than $100 million—including transport, water, telecommunications, energy, health and education, but excluding Defence projects—will be looked at and reasons will be published for the decision.

If only Infrastructure Australia had been asked to assess telecommunications in the term of the previous government, then we may not have had what I have always predicted would be a $100 billion white elephant, which will be a monument to Labor's inefficiency and their wastefulness in building any form of infrastructure. Had Infrastructure Australia been able to look at that, then we might have got a different outcome. As senators—particularly those involved in estimates committees at the time—would know, Mr Deegan always used to very embarrassingly tell us that the NBN was not part of his remit. The government is committed to ensuring that Australia has the productive infrastructure that we need to meet the challenges ahead. We recognise that Australia needs improved planning, coordinated across all jurisdictions, to underpin investment decisions and regulatory reform.

Infrastructure Australia was established by the former government as an independent adviser to governments, in an effort to eliminate the short-term cycle in project prioritisation and to develop a new view on infrastructure priorities and policies. But there were concerns that Infrastructure Australia had not been successful in fundamentally changing the way projects are identified at a national level. Whilst it has delivered priority project lists, there are some concerns that the projects are derived from state and territory government project proposals and prioritisation is based on the extent to which the project business case is advanced, rather than the extent to which the project will contribute to improved national productivity.

The current structure does not provide the degree of independence and transparency needed to provide the best advice to government. This bill will do a number of things that will remove the ministerial power to determine a class of the proposals that IA must not eventuate. The opposition has tried to make something about this about public transport, but I want to point out that the original intent of referring to a class of proposals was to exclude Defence projects and projects seeking Commonwealth funding of under $100 million. It is important that Defence projects are excluded, because they are done for Defence strategic reasons and really need other assessments.

The amendments also remove the specific functions to be performed only when directed by the minister. The original intent of allowing for publication requests was to increase transparency to the public, while striking the right balance with commercial and confidentiality issues. There is a removal of the ministerial power to specify requirements related to time frames and the scope and manner in which Infrastructure Australia must act.

It is important that Infrastructure Australia be given all the resources and the powers to do its job and to do it in an independent and open way. However, I do raise one word of caution to the government. That is that the government should always remember that the government is elected to govern Australia. In all cases with independent authorities—no matter how good they are and no matter how skills-based they may be—the end result is that it is governments that have to make the decisions and it is governments that are accountable to the Australian public at election time for the decisions they make. I would hate to see an occasion where all-important decisions in relation to infrastructure were made by independent—skilled, but non-representative—bodies. In a democracy, always the end result is that the democratically elected parliament must make decisions on infrastructure and, indeed, on most things.

I believe the amendment bill and the amendments to the bill proposed by the government are a good step forward. They do highlight the Abbott government's concentration on infrastructure. I am sure that the amendments in this bill and the ongoing focus by the coalition government on the absolute and imperative need for infrastructure improvements in Australia will help to define the Prime Minister as he would like to be defined, and that is as the infrastructure prime minister of Australia. I wish him well in that, because I know that if he can achieve that recognition it will mean that infrastructure in Australia will have been so vastly improved, as it should be, that it will have enhanced the economic productivity and the benefit of our nation.

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise today to speak on the Infrastructure Australia Amendment Bill 2013. What we need to remember first of all is that the bill we are debating here today is not the original bill that was passed in the House of Representatives, because even those opposite realised that they had gone to extremes; they had not consulted properly and so a number of amendments to the bill were agreed to over in the other place. I am pretty pleased that the government have come some way to acknowledging some of the errors of their ways.

The original bill did seek to turn Infrastructure Australia into a pork-barrelling unit, no matter what the previous speaker said. The bill aimed to tie the hands of Infrastructure Australia and prevent it from undertaking investigations into any projects or class of project that the minister and the government did not ideologically agree with. Like other government agencies that produce expert advice that the government finds inconvenient, Infrastructure Australia was due to be directed, gagged or ignored. Those opposite do not believe in good process, they do not believe in best practice and they are really not interested in infrastructure. They are certainly not the party of infrastructure—and I hesitate to say it—but I doubt that the current Prime Minister will ever be remembered as the prime minister for infrastructure. In fact, when the Howard government was in power, it funded a total of just $300 million infrastructure in Sydney over 12 years. It is those opposite who rorted the Regional Partnerships scheme for their own political benefit as well.

As I said, the Labor Party is the party of infrastructure. It is the Labor Party who realises that modern, efficient, well-placed infrastructure, built in accordance with expert advice, is what will drive Australia's prosperity into the future. It is the Labor Party who understands that building infrastructure requires vision and that the needs of the entire Australian community have to be served, not just those in marginal electorates that those opposite would like to pork-barrel. It is the Labor Party who understands that infrastructure includes ports, freight, rail, light rail, airports, communications, bridges and much more, not just more and more roads.

With regard to Senator Macdonald's comments about what the Australian Labor Party did for infrastructure—just to correct the record—the former Labor government oversaw a radical transformation in the way that the federal government approached infrastructure. Under Labor, infrastructure spending across the economy rose to record levels. In terms of spending on infrastructure as a proportion of GDP, Australia rose from 20th in the OECD to first in 2012. We lifted funding for infrastructure from $132 to $225 per Australian. We created Infrastructure Australia to research and rank proposed infrastructure projects based on their potential to add to economic productivity. We delivered the National Ports Strategy and the National Land Freight Strategy. Total annual private and public investments in our nation's roads, ports, railways, energy generators, water supply facilities and telecommunications networks hit a record $58.5 billion in 2011-12—equivalent to four per cent of GDP; the biggest share of national income since at least 1986-87. Compared to the last full year of the former Howard government in 2006-07, Labor's annual infrastructure spending in real terms was up 59 per cent by 2011-12. Total public and private sector infrastructure spending over federal Labor's first five years in office was almost $250 billion—70 per cent growth in real terms—compared with the $150 billion spent during the last five years of the former Howard government.

I understand that Senator Macdonald does not like to acknowledge any of this, and he really did not have much to say. He spent the first nine minutes of his contribution on the bill bagging Senator Conroy's contribution. If he really had had anything to say, he would have spoken more forcefully about the good parts of the infrastructure bill and not just bag the man, my colleague Senator Conroy. But this is not unusual for Senator Macdonald; he does that. You can bet your life that, if you are on just before Senator Macdonald, he will play the man, not the policy. So we are not at all surprised by it. Labor is the party of infrastructure and always will be, because Labor knows that strong infrastructure is the backbone of a strong economy and the key to greater prosperity.

Let us get back to the bill we are debating today. The explanatory memorandum for the bill—or should I say the bill that passed the House—claims:

The Bill will strengthen the role of Infrastructure Australia, as an independent, transparent and expert advisory body through a change in its governance structure and through better clarification of its functions.

But this is utter rubbish, as the minister and his Senate colleagues know, and it is the reason why they changed it. The government does not care about planning infrastructure for Australia's long-term future. This federal government has already explicitly ruled out funding for important urban public transport projects such as the Melbourne metro, the Brisbane cross-city rail, the Perth light rail and airport link and the Tonsley Park rail upgrade in Adelaide.

The Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee inquired into this bill and reported earlier this year. The committee received 20 submissions from areas such as the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development, Australian Logistics Council, Urban Development Institute of Australia, Infrastructure Australia, Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, the Australian Automobile Association, and the Business Council of Australia, among others. Here is a quote which should make anyone who believes in good process shudder. I hope those on the other side are listening, because it is from Michael Deegan, Infrastructure Australia's infrastructure coordinator. Mr Deegan himself said in Infrastructure Australia's submission:

I understand that the Infrastructure Australia Amendment Bill went through more than 20 drafts before it was presented to the House of Representatives. My office was not consulted during development of the Bill. This lack of consultation is both disappointing and disturbing. Those preparing the Bill could usefully have sought comment on:

Can you believe that? Twenty drafts!

Debate interrupted.