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

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Land Transport Infrastructure Amendment Bill. Building infrastructure for the long term can be truly transformative for an economy. It can deliver productivity gains that create jobs and make us a better country.

Labor has a proud record in this area. After the stagnant years of the Howard government, it was Labor that turned infrastructure investment around. Current levels of government infrastructure investment have not been so significant since the 1980s. From 2008-09 up to the last financial year, the Nation Building Program expended a record $36 billion, with a strong focus on the nation's roads, rail and intermodal terminals. We are now ranked No. 1 in the OECD for infrastructure investment as a proportion of the economy, after languishing in the rankings during the Howard years.

Much of the government spending on economic infrastructure is framed by the Nation Building Program (National Land Transport) Act. This bill relates to the majority of federal infrastructure spending on road, rail and intermodal projects. Under Labor, around $6 billion per year flowed through this act to fund land transport projects. The bill as proposed does not represent ambitious change. It is more a pedestrian rearrangement and updating of certain aspects of the existing act.

Labor support continued funding for the Roads to Recovery program beyond mid-2014, but we expect that this program will be subject to rigorous audits to ensure value for money and indeed that this funding adds to existing roads funding rather than displaces funding already available at the local level.

It is important to note that Labor allocated funding for the Roads to Recovery program for five years in the 2013 budget. This funding totalled $1.75 billion. Despite this fact, the coalition has tried to wage a ham-fisted scare campaign about a threat to Roads to Recovery because Labor wants to make this bill better. Labor fully backed Roads to Recovery, without freezing the indexation of financial assistance grants or otherwise stripping the local governments of much-needed funds.

Senators should be aware that this bill passed the other place on 24 March. A Senate committee reported on this bill at the same time. Despite the claimed urgency to extend the Roads to Recovery program, this bill has not come before the Senate once since then—not at all. Of claimed urgency, it passed the House of Representatives in March but has not turned up till today. It has languished for 155 days. This delay is of the government's own choosing. Frankly, the only threat to Roads to Recovery is the coalition.

Let us not forget about the indexation freeze to financial assistance grants to councils, announced in this year's budget, which will continue every year as far as the eye can see. It will effectively wipe out the entire size of the $350 million per annum of the Roads to Recovery budget. So what Mr Tony Abbott gives with one hand he is taking away with the other. He promises increases in one place but takes more than that away in another place.

Local government is justifiably up in arms about this savage and, not surprisingly, unflagged cut. It was not mentioned before the election. But this cut will impact most on regional and rural councils—the very councils with the highest road maintenance burden. And where are our National Party colleagues? The lapdogs, the doormats—they are at it again. They are going to come into this chamber and once again going to vote to disadvantage regional, rural and country voters. They are a sad and sorry reflection of what was once a great party that actually argued for its own constituents. They talk big back home but then they come into the big red and green chambers and just roll over on their backs and let the Liberal Party tickle their tummies. With cut after cut after cut, whether it is to roads, broadband networks, health, or, more importantly, education for rural kids, they roll over on their backs and let the Liberals tickle their tummies. And what is more distressing is that the government appears even to be successful in tickling the tummies of a few of the crossbench senators. That is what is really disturbing about this debate today.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I find the 'tickling the tummies' very disturbing!

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Conroy has the call.

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

Then one should object to it when it is done to one! So much for the Nationals and the coalition wanting to help the bush. Another important regional issue; another example of the National Party rolling over and failing to stand up for the people they say they represent.

Other changes the government is seeking in this bill include renaming the act to take out the phrase 'nation-building', adding new types of eligible projects, and funding recipients and repealing some spent acts. Labor is concerned that the renaming of the program could incur additional costs—for instance, in terms of signage. Why do you want to now have a new name and get all these new signs made just out of your own political vanity? 'We want to call it a new name, spend taxpayer's dollars and change all of the signs just so we can have our name on it rather than the original name.' We hope the assurance that the minister has given is that this will not be the case, but we will be watching. If new signs start popping up and taxpayers have their money wasted simply for the government's vanity and ego, we will be holding them to account.

Who can possibly object to the term 'nation building'? What is the problem? Why do you need to go down such a pathetic, puerile, juvenile path? The coalition, though, I suspect is most likely worried about the term 'nation building', because it has always been associated with Labor. We are proud of that fact. Labor has a long, proud tradition of building this nation and its infrastructure and we will continue to do so into the future. Nation building is what Labor does—a vision in the long-term interest of our country instead of the short-term political interests which we see so much of from this new government.

Labor will be seeking to amend this bill in two important respects. Firstly, Labor will move to strengthen governance around project selection by elevating the role of Infrastructure Australia in advising on project benefits. Prior to approving individual projects under the act, the minister must have regard to the identified priorities and plans set by Infrastructure Australia and any advice it produces relating to the type of project being considered for funding. So, we do not want to give this to the National Party, the party of regional rorts programs, the party that enjoys nothing more than reaching into taxpayers' pockets and spreading largesse in the form of pork-barrel grants to its mates around the country. Further—and I note this with some irony—for projects with a value of $100 million or more, the minister must obtain an evaluation of the project to Infrastructure Australia.

We have heard an awful lot from this government over the last few months—and it is especially poignant today—why we have got to have cost-benefit analyses. We have just spent millions of dollars paying Minister Turnbull's mates to do a shonky cost-benefit analysis so we can pretend that we have done one when we have already made the decisions. The minister wrote to the company and directed them as to what they were building in a broadband network before the outcome of the cost-benefit analysis. But, goodness me, what good luck we had: the analysis confirmed exactly what the minister told the company to do six months ago.

I do not even know why the government should be afraid of this particular amendment. Just hire Henry Ergas to do the cost-benefit analysis of these projects, and I am sure you will still get as many National Party pork barrels rolling out of this building as you ever had. Just pay Henry Ergas and you will get the outcome that the minister has predetermined.

This amendment makes the logical link to Infrastructure Australia' role to provide advice on infrastructure and national priorities and the minister's role to decide how to allocate scarce Commonwealth funds. Who could be opposed to that except a bunch of National Party pork barrellers, which the Liberal Party, when they tickle them in the tummy, agree to all the other atrocities to attack the living standard of ordinary regional and rural Australians but will give the MP a little bit of cash to splash around electorates so that it can pretend it is really representing their interests?

The government have sought to avoid this sensible amendment by proposing and claiming they want to put it in the Infrastructure Australia Act. Oh my goodness! They have actually said that that is where it should go. Make no mistake, Senators: the Land Transport Infrastructure Act is the sole enabling act that governs the terms under which the infrastructure minister can authorise expenditure of Commonwealth funds on roads and rail projects. There is not a more appropriate place to put this amendment. Do not be fooled by the government saying, 'No, no, we'll put it in a different act.' No other act does this—certainly not the Infrastructure Australia Act. That has an entirely different purpose. The Infrastructure Australia Act establishes a body of experts that provide advice to government on infrastructure policy and projects.

IA looks at best practice project procurement. It looks at what the nation lacks and suggests what it needs. It flags future needs. It assesses project value and flags emerging issues in the sector. It has a primarily strategic focus.

However, it is the national land transport act that authorises payment of billions of dollars a year to the states for actual projects such as the East West Link. As some of you would know I live in Victoria and I am very familiar with the East West Link. The importance of this amending legislation and the key reason this government does not want to support it is very simple. Do not listen to what this government has to say. Follow the money, as they say in the classics. The money trail out of this building on East West Link stage 2 is to Victoria.

At Senate estimates, we heard that Infrastructure Australia has classified this project in Victoria as 'not ready to proceed'. It is no surprise to a Victorian who follows this, because this is a project where the Victorian government have decided where they are going to dig a road tunnel. They have decided: 'That spot right there is where we are going to start digging this tunnel.' You might then ask: if a tunnel is being dug, where is it going to come up? Where are you planning on bringing this tunnel up? The truth is that the Victorian government have not made a decision about where they are going to bring the tunnel up. They have started digging a tunnel and they do not know where it is going to come up.

Yet the federal government, for all their rhetoric of 'must have a cost-benefit analysis, must do this,' this is $1½ billion, from recollection, that they are giving to the Victorian government for a road project involving a tunnel, but they have not even decided where that tunnel will come up. So, despite independent advice, the government said it would hand over this $1.5 billion to help out the drowning Victorian government—I think my speech notes say 'struggling', but let me assure you it is not struggling; this Victorian government is drowning. A New South Wales man wrote that!

It is drowning—$1.5 billion for one end of a tunnel will not save the Napthine government. The sum of $1.5 billion is being handed over for a project that Infrastructure Australia says is not ready to proceed. Common sense to most Victorians would say that it is not ready to proceed because they do not know where they are going to bring the tunnel up. But they have now given this money and the work will not even start until Christmas next year. On what basis do you give $1.5 billion for a project, which is deemed not ready to proceed and in respect of which they do not know where it will finish, 18 months in advance? There is a very real reason the government will not accept this amendment and there is a very real reason why this chamber should insist on this amendment.

Of the handful of new projects over $100 million in value announced by this government in its budget of largely broken promises, we found out at estimates that no projects—none; not one, not two, but a big round zero—have been properly assessed by Infrastructure Australia prior to funding. That is yet another broken coalition promise. They made a big thing of this before the election; they said: 'For any project over $100 million, we have to have a cost-benefit analysis done by Infrastructure Australia.' So you take their feet, you put them to the fire, and you say, 'Okay—now's the time to implement your policy; let's support this amendment.' Oh, no! As usual, this government treats infrastructure as nothing more than a pork-barrel re-election fund to parade around the country, claiming it is building for the future.

So you can understand how important strengthening governance is for this bill. For projects that are funded, this amendment will require the minister to publish details of the projects and include Infrastructure Australia's prior evaluation.

Infrastructure Australia has not even been able to assess East West Link stage 2 because the Victorian government has not given them more than one page of information on this proposal, described as high-level. It had to be bloody high to get away with just one page for $1.5 billion! That is not high level; that is up-in-space level!

So, overall, this amendment is vital. It strengthens governance—precisely what every major stakeholder in the infrastructure sector has called for in the current Productivity Commission inquiry into public infrastructure. These major stakeholders include the Business Council of Australia— (Time expired)

Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, I begin by noting that this is not my first speech—you have got to wait until this afternoon for that!

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Rice.

Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Land Transport Infrastructure Amendment Bill 2014, subject to some very important amendments. This legislation in itself is a series of amendments to the existing Commonwealth transport funding legislation. The further amendments which the Greens are proposing will include adding the criteria of transport integration and sustainability into the overall assessment of what projects get funded; legislating for funding to be provided for heavy vehicle safety and productivity measures; and, importantly, where funding for a project exceeds $50 million, requiring scrutiny by Infrastructure Australia and having transparency about the results of that scrutiny.

I am pleased to see that the legislation is neutral about the form of transport infrastructure being funded so that, as well as funding for roads, it makes provision for funding for rail, and for intermodal projects infrastructure, where freight gets transferred from road to rail and vice versa. This is refreshing, given the Prime Minister's irrational objection to federal funding of urban rail projects.

The Greens are also neutral about the form of transport infrastructure that should be funded. We are guided by overriding objectives of providing safe, cost-effective, environmentally sustainable and convenient transport that is accessible to all. What this means is that we support road projects that help provide safe, cost-effective, environmentally sustainable and convenient transport that is accessible to all. We also support passenger and freight rail and other public transport projects which meet these criteria.

This legislation wraps up funding programs that I know well from my time in local government: the Roads to Recovery program, which has been talked about so much over the last week; black spot programs; and the nation-building program. These programs have funded essential local road-building and maintenance programs—absolutely critical infrastructure.

I note, however, that this legislation has been considered at the same time as local government is reeling from savage budget cuts to local government road funding. Here we are setting up a framework for land transport funding in the context of the government's $1 billion cut to Commonwealth Financial Assistance Grants. Regional councillors across the country have expressed their loud opposition to these cuts that will result in a decline in service delivery as well as road maintenance throughout the local government sector. The Municipal Association of Victoria president Bill McArthur has said that:

Commonwealth financial assistance grants are a core revenue stream for local government. The grants provide up to 27 per cent of rural councils' total funding so rural communities will suffer a massive impact.

The Greens are appalled at these budget cuts. They hit just the kinds of transport infrastructure that need to be supported.

We should be funding upgrades of unsafe local roads across rural and regional areas; upgrading roads in outer suburbs that are carrying 10 times as much traffic as they were designed for; and upgrading alternative roads or creating bypasses so that heavy vehicles do not have to go straight down the main street of regional cities or rumble down residential streets. We should be funding the repair and proper maintenance of bridges. I remember well when I was a Maribyrnong councillor and mayor talking to my rural colleagues about bridges. In Maribyrnong I think we had five; rural shires had 40 or more and a much smaller rate base to fund them from.

I road my bike through regional Victoria on my way to Canberra and we travelled along a range of country roads from the most delightful narrow country lanes and regional city streets to a 12-kilometre stint along the Hume. By the end of the trip, I had three distinct road funding programs that I thought were a priority. The one that was particularly relevant to today's debate was sealed shoulders on any country road that carried any significant amount of traffic, particularly truck traffic. This will enable not just safe cycling conditions but easier passing, particularly of slow-moving trucks by other vehicles.

My last job before standing for election was as a strategic transport planner in the outer Melbourne municipality of Hume. People know me well as an advocate for the public transport that we need, particularly in our outer suburbs, but I was a great roads advocate in Hume too. My focus for the 18 months in that job was the development of the Hume Integrated Land Use and Transport Strategy. The key aims of this strategy were to advocate for the duplication of roads that used to be country roads: Somerton, Sunbury, Mickleham and Craigieburn roads, which are now carrying huge amounts of traffic both passenger and freight traffic.

Local government cannot afford to duplicate these roads and, with the limited amount of state government funding that is being allocated, VicRoads told us they had a backlog of arterial road duplication projects so that it was likely to be decades before all these roads were duplicated.

On my home turf, the Greens and I are long-term supporters of the Westgate truck bypass, which would get trucks off residential streets in Yarraville and Footscray. This is a very cost-effective land transport infrastructure investment plus effective freight-rail transport to and from the port connected with the intermodal transport hubs in the outer suburbs would allow up to half of the containerised freight going to and from the Port of Melbourne to go by rail, freeing up lots of room on the overloaded Westgate Freeway. If we invested in decent public transport across the outer suburbs, rail and bus, then we really would be on our way to solving traffic congestion.

This type of road and public transport investment scores very highly on the criteria of helping to provide safe, cost-effective, environmentally sustainable and convenient transport that is accessible to all. This is where the money needs to be spent, not on massively expensive, polluting freeways and motorways in Melbourne and Sydney, which are not cost-effective, will not solve congestion problems. Spending billions of dollars on these city tollways takes money away from where it needs to be spent: on local roads, country roads, public transport and freight-rail projects.

The critical thing, which is so blindingly obvious, is that infrastructure costs money. It is an investment so, just as obviously, it is critically important to make sure the money is spent in the most effective way. To make sure this happens, it is essential that there is good process, transparent process and evidence based decision-making. The tighter the money is, the more important it is. If we are serious about efficiency in government, then we have to make sure that we are not splashing money around on massively expensive transport projects that do diddly squat towards creating safe, cost-effective, environmentally sustainable and convenient transport that is accessible to all.

Having strong, evidence based decision making that involves assessing infrastructure projects against these criteria is critical. That is why the Greens have been supporters of Infrastructure Australia, which was set up to do just that—to pull evidence together to enable objective assessment of transport projects rather than transport infrastructure priorities being determined by their location with relation to marginal electorates or by other perceived short-term political benefits. That is why, in this bill, we want to ensure that the funding of any project is considered in the light of Infrastructure Australia's infrastructure priority lists and infrastructure plans, and that any projects over $50 million are scrutinised by Infrastructure Australia. This $50 million benchmark was recommendation 2.3 of the Productivity Commission report into public infrastructure, which was undertaken this year. They stated:

All governments should commit to subjecting all public infrastructure investment proposals above $50 million to rigorous cost-benefit analyses that are publicly released …

This legislation provides a perfect opportunity to put this recommendation into legislation. We also think that, regardless of the size of the project, if Infrastructure Australia have anything relevant to say about a project their views should be taken into account. For the vast majority of small projects, such as roadside rest stops and black spot projects, Infrastructure Australia would not have anything to say, so taking their views into account would be an easy thing to do. But it may be that the black spot being considered is on a road that is a feeder road to a proposed Infrastructure Australia priority project, and knowing this will be very relevant in deciding whether or not that black spot gets funded.

Rigorous and transparent assessment of transport projects is fundamental good governance and standard practice throughout the world. It is what the community expects of us. This sort of assessment would stop the situation of slashing vital support to regional councils while at the same time committing $3½ billion to the WestConnex private tollway in Sydney and $3 billion for the East West Link in Melbourne. These are massively polluting tollway projects that will not improve congestion but will boost the profits of private developers. In both cases the business cases have not been released despite requests through the Senate and from the community. There has been no transparency, no full cost-benefit analysis, despite Tony Abbott promising before the election that all projects worth more than $100 million would receive this scrutiny.

In contrast to the $6½ billion promised for these massively expensive, massively polluting tollway projects, the government has committed less than a third of that to the Roads to Recovery program in the 2014 budget. When it comes to infrastructure and road spending, this government is all rhetoric. It is the road projects, freight projects and public transport projects covered by this legislation that should be getting priority and funding, instead of billions being provided to the private sector for the WestConnex and East West Link tollways.

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

I am pleased to support the Land Transport Infrastructure Amendment Bill. The bill does a number of things, the first of which is that it renames the Nation Building Program (National Land Transport) Act 2009. It gives it the more appropriate name of the National Land Transport Act 2014, thereby removing the link between the name of the act and the name of the land transport infrastructure funding program. This means that the act will not need to be amended if the name of the land transport infrastructure funding program changes. It is the most sensible name for the act and it keeps it above politics. It will also streamline and enhance the operation of the act to benefit states and territories.

By and large, this act is important because it enables a continuation of the wonderful Roads to Recovery program after 30 June 2014. I want to spend little time on this, because, if I may proudly say, I was the minister who introduced into this chamber the original act that provided for Roads to Recovery. It is a wonderful program that gives federal money to local governments to allow them to do road work that otherwise would not be possible. There has been some hesitation in recent years about the constitutionality of funding going directly from the Commonwealth to local governments, but clearly that is addressed by this new bill. Local authorities right around Australia, particularly in rural and regional Australia, have a major influence on which roads are constructed; they know what local people need and they are the best equipped to plan and then build roads in their local communities. This Roads to Recovery program introduced by the Howard government gave local authorities that additional funding that they had sadly lacked prior to that time and enabled them to build thousands and thousands of kilometres of roads that were absolutely necessary, particularly in rural and regional Australia. I remember a few years after the program was introduced that for much of regional Queensland there was no funding at all for state roads from the then Labor state government. With the approval of the federal government, councils were putting their Roads to Recovery money towards states roads to enable those linkages between small country towns and bigger ones; and it was well received.

As a Queensland senator, Mr Deputy President, you will excuse me if I talk only about Queensland. I must say that both the current federal government and the current Queensland government—Campbell Newman's Liberal-National Party government—are doing such wonderful work on road improvements that I get a bit annoyed with them, because, not matter where you drive in Queensland these days, you will find road works in progress. That, of course, means lanes cut off or detours or speed restrictions, and, for someone who travels the roads as widely as I do, that does become a source of annoyance. But I console myself by understanding these roadworks will benefit all Queenslanders and all Australians in the years ahead. A great deal of work is being done on the Bruce Highway, and I give full credit to a number of federal and state politicians who have been campaigning for its upgrade for many years: George Christensen, Ewen Jones and Warren Entsch have done a wonderful job in advocating for money for that work. I live in a place called Ayr and my office is in Townsville about 100 kilometres to the north and I drive to work on the occasions I am in the North. I am delighted to see work on the southern approaches to Townsville that were promised by Labor for years—each budget we would have an announcement from Labor that they were going to fix the Van Tassel Street intersection to include a bypass. They kept talking about it a year after year but, as was typical with the Labor government, it never happened—indeed, I think in the last budget they actually withdrew it. That work is now happening and it will provide a four-lane entrance from the south into the burgeoning city of Townsville; it will certainly help anyone using that road, including in a selfish way myself. All the way throughout Queensland, or all along the Bruce Highway, roadworks are occurring. All credit goes to Campbell Newman and his government for that road work and to the federal government for the funding they have provided to the Queensland government for that road work to be done. It is not just the Bruce Highway or the main highways. During the last few months, I have driven in many of the back roads, the secondary roads of Queensland, and have seen that work is happening in all of them. Congratulations to Warren Truss, Campbell Newman and all those responsible for the enormous amount of road work that is happening.

As well as dealing with the Roads to Recovery program—I want to come back to that briefly—this bill will also unify the schemes for funding National Land Transport Network projects in part 3 of the Nation Building Program (National Land Transport) Act and the off-network projects in part 6 of that act. Furthermore, the bill will also enlarge the scope of power to fund research, investigations, studies and analysis, first by expanding the types of organisations that can be funded to include partnerships and non-corporate Commonwealth entities in certain circumstances, and second by allowing funding for the additional purpose of researching and investigating projects funded or submitted for consideration for funding under the act. The bill also repeals three spent pieces of legislation in this general field. It is again part of the coalition government's program to tidy up the books, so to speak, to reduce the red tape and get rid of legislation that is no longer relevant.

The Labor Party in this bill have proposed eight pages of amendments to provide for a separate section on this program. It is a program that is already provided for in legislation. So the Labor Party are—or at least they were last time we were talking about this; I am hopeful that perhaps they have had a rethink about this—proposing these amendments to provide a separate section in this bill for something that has already been dealt with in the other legislation. We agree that it is a very important program to which the Labor Party were averting. In fact we have committed more funding to that program than the current opposition did when it was in government. But the amendments proposed by Labor simply duplicate provisions in the existing legislation.

When Mr Albanese was the minister, he established the program, but to ensure the program could receive funding under the legislation, all Mr Albanese needed to do was to amend the definition of a road in this act, which is exactly what he did. In 2008 he introduced the AusLink (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill to add to the definition of road in section 4 of the act. He knew then that it was not necessary to include it in a full separate section. He and his party should understand that it was not necessary then, back in 2008, and neither is it necessary now.

The coalition government is committed to a number of other programs that are not provided separate status in the legislation—that is, the Labor Party want to particularly go to one area, but there are other programs that are not provided with separate pieces of legislation and they do not need to be. If the heavy vehicle program were to be included then, for consistency, those programs should also be included, potentially adding up to 40 pages of unnecessary duplication to this very simple bill.

We are, as I mentioned, committed to reducing red tape, not creating it, and the new programs that we are talking about include the Bridges Renewal Program—a wonderful program that will help many communities get the bridges they need and repair some pretty rickety, narrow bridges that are a safety concern at present. Again, all credit to the minister, Mr Truss, for the introduction of that new Bridges Renewal Program. There are also the managed motorways program, another regional roads program and the national highway program. None of these are specifically referred to in legislation, but the Labor Party, for some reason, wanted one element of those programs to be the subject of some eight additional pages of legislation. So I would hope that the Labor Party have had a rethink about that. I hope that the Greens and the other crossbench senators understand that that is not necessary. It is just useless padding, and it does complicate what is a very simple bill, the main purpose of which is to ensure that the Roads to Recovery program continues beyond 30 June 2014.

Councils will be anxiously watching this debate and this bill. As I understand it, payments were to cease because the Labor Party's program concluded on 30 June 2014. There has not been any tangible impact of the failure to pass this bill to date, but if it is not passed immediately it will throw into jeopardy the payments that continue to go to local councils or local government authorities for the Roads to Recovery program.

Again, I repeat that this is a program initiated by the Howard government, and I say to any senator: if you are ever visiting a local authority anywhere in Australia and you are at a loss to know what to talk about, just mention Roads to Recovery and you will get an instant response from all councillors, CEOs and council staff on just what a wonderful program it has been. It has really saved the day for many communities who were doing it tough and could not, through their rate base or financial assistance grants funding, gather together the money to do these essential road projects, and this Roads to Recovery program gave them that opportunity and that ability to properly service their communities. That has been great for those communities, great for Australians and, indeed, great for the competitiveness and competency of Australia as a nation. The work on those local roads has really built our productivity and helped people, and it deserves support.

I urge all senators to support this bill in its original form. It is a simple bill. It is there to extend the Roads to Recovery program. I would guess that every senator in this chamber is keen to see that program continue to be funded. Let us get on and do that. If you want to have lots of talk about other programs, then let us do it in the appropriate red legislation at some other time, but it is certainly not necessary now. Let us keep the bill simple. Let us get the money flowing and let councils know that they have the certainty of that continued funding under the Roads to Recovery program.

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

I, too, rise to speak on the Land Transport Infrastructure Amendment Bill 2014. For those opposite, spending money on infrastructure is not a means to improving productivity, and it does not appear to be a means to improving the whole economy for the benefit of all Australians. It does, however, appear to be a means through which they can pork barrel their own marginal electorates, as they did through the rorted Howard era Regional Partnerships Program.

The Labor Party is a party that believes in infrastructure. It is a party that knows that developing infrastructure will improve outcomes for all Australians. Therefore, it needs to be developed according to need. Only the Labor Party understands that building infrastructure requires vision and an understanding that the needs of the entire Australian community need to be served, not just a marginal electorate that those opposite, as I said, would like to pork barrel in.

It is the Labor Party that realises that modern, efficient, well-placed infrastructure built in accordance with expert advice is what will drive Australia's prosperity into the future. And it is the Labor Party that understands that infrastructure includes ports, freight rail, light rail, airports, communication infrastructure, bridges and much more—not just more and more roads. That is why the former Labor government oversaw a radical transformation in the way that the Commonwealth approaches infrastructure.

Compared to the last full year of the former Howard government, 2006-07, annual infrastructure spending in real terms was up 59 per cent by 2011-12.    Infrastructure spending across the economy rose to record levels. In terms of spending on infrastructure as a proportion of GDP Australia rose from 20th to first in 2012 in the OECD.

We created Infrastructure Australia to research and rank proposed infrastructure projects based on their potential to add to economic productivity.    We rebuilt or upgraded 7,500 kilometres of road and 4,000 kilometres of railway lines. We delivered the National Ports Strategy and the National Freight Strategy.

Total annual private and public investment in our nation's roads, ports, railways, energy generators, water supply facilities and telecommunication networks hit a record $58.5 billion in 2011-12, equivalent to four per cent of GDP, the biggest share of national income since 1986-87.

We lifted funding for infrastructure from $132 per Australian to $225. Total public and private sector infrastructure spending over federal Labor's first five years in office was almost $250 billion—almost 70 per cent greater in real terms than the $150 billion spent during the last five years of the former Howard government. As the figures I just quoted show, it is Labor that believes in infrastructure.

I spoke in this place earlier this year about the Infrastructure Australia Amendment Bill. Labor created Infrastructure Australia to research Australia's future infrastructure needs and impartially assess projects. Unfortunately, the version of the Infrastructure Australia bill that was passed in the House sought to destroy Infrastructure Australia's ability to plan for the future, assess the value of proposed projects, publish information without the minister's consent and would have even prevented Infrastructure Australia from doing research on whole areas of infrastructure needs like public transport or how to protect infrastructure from the effects of climate change.

In short, those opposite wanted to prevent Infrastructure from assessing their pork-barrelling projects or to provide frank and fearless advice on the country's future infrastructure needs. I do not believe that those opposite are serious about infrastructure at all. If they were, they would have given this bill a higher priority in this place.

This bill continues the funding for the Roads to Recovery program, which expired on 30 June, 2014. The program is made ongoing, indefinitely, rather than having a set expiry date in the act.

Senator Macdonald mentioned the need to pass this legislation today. If the government were able to manage the proceedings of the chamber properly, they could have had the legislation passed before the funding expired.

Unfortunately, though, I do not think those opposite really have a clue about how to act when in government and that is pretty obvious from the many faux pas we have evidenced in the media since the change of government. I will not digress, because I would take up all my time just discussing those faux pas.

Other changes in this bill see the distinction between national projects, network and off-network projects eliminated and all are retitled as 'investment projects'. Transport research funding criteria are widened to include research into funded projects.

This bill also makes partnerships and non-corporate Commonwealth entities eligible to apply for research funding. The bill would also repeal the following three spent Land Transport Infrastructure Acts: the Australian Land Transport Development Act 1988, which has been superseded; the Roads to Recovery Act 2000, which has no outstanding claims against it; and the Railway Standardization (New South Wales and Victoria) Agreement Act 1958. Loans under this act were repaid in June 2013 and this act therefore has no further effect.

The opposition has no issue with removing from the statute books spent and redundant legislation. We do, however, have issues with pork barrelling. We know that the current government likes to take credit for things that it has not done. We can see that from the minister's second reading speech in the other place. In that speech the minister mentioned almost a dozen major projects that were announced and funded by the federal Labor government, including: $6.7 billion to upgrade the Bruce Highway; $5.6 billion to finish the duplication of the Pacific Highway; $1 billion to continue the Gateway Motorway North upgrade in Brisbane; $686 million to finish the Gateway WA Project in Perth; $615 million to build the Swan Valley Bypass on the Perth to Darwin Highway; $500 million for the upgrade of South Road in Adelaide; $405 million for the F3–M2 Link project in Sydney. One that is particularly important to me is the $400 million to continue the Midland Highway upgrade in Tasmania; Labor in fact committed $500 million and so the current government thinks it can do it for $100 million less. We also allocated $300 million to finalise plans, engineering design and environmental assessments for the Melbourne to Brisbane Inland Rail project and we also allocated $1.8 billion to the WestConnex project in Sydney, subject to conditions including a proper business case.

The current government has a nasty history of taking credit for the work of others, and the Australian people are waking up to the government's insincerity and their deceit. In Tasmania, they re-announced our entire nation-building package, albeit belatedly, including the same funding for the freight rail revitalisation, for the Brooker Highway and for the Huon Highway. There is only one difference: that is the Midland Highway, for which they have announced a $100 million cut. It is unbelievable that the Liberal senators from Tasmania can stand up and say that they care about infrastructure for Tasmania, when they have ripped $100 million from the Midlands Highway upgrade. They need to explain to the people of Tasmania why they did not fight harder for that funding, as does the member for Lyons in the other place. They need to explain why they have not fought harder for funding for Tasmania.

Labor will be looking to move amendments to this bill. We realise the importance that infrastructure projects be assessed to see whether they meet the nation's needs—not the political needs of the current government. The opposition's first amendment is to improve governance arrangements around project selection. Many stakeholders in the infrastructure debate have called for greater transparency and accountability over how the Commonwealth chooses to spend its infrastructure funds. The Australian people deserve transparency in the expenditure of between $3 and $6 billion per annum—much of that spending is channelled via this act.

When this bill faced the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee, Labor senators had additional comments and flagged amendments. The opposition's amendments would see that, prior to approving individual projects under the act, the minister must have regard to the identified priorities and plans set by Infrastructure Australia and any advice it produces relating to the type of project being considered for funding. Further, for projects with a value of $100 million or more, the minister must obtain an evaluation of the project from Infrastructure Australia. This evaluation will include a cost-benefit analysis from Infrastructure Australia and an Infrastructure Australia view on the priority of the project against its identified national priorities. For projects that are funded, the minister will be required to publish details of the project and include Infrastructure Australia's evaluation and cost-benefit outcome. Overall, this strengthened governance is precisely what all major stakeholders in the infrastructure sector have been calling for in the current Productivity Commission inquiry into public infrastructure, and in the recent Senate inquiry into Infrastructure Australia. Allowing Infrastructure Australia to assess these projects will help to prevent the pork-barrelling we have seen under previous Liberal-National governments. This means that, if they do choose to approve projects that are unworthy, the Australian people will be able to see where and what the government is funding for their own political gain.

The opposition's second amendment is to formalise the Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity program as a program under the act. The Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity program is an Australian initiative established under the act in 2009 to improve safety and productivity outcomes of heavy vehicle operations across Australia. This program is the first dedicated Commonwealth program of its kind and aims to reduce driver fatigue. Unfortunately, too many Australian truck drivers die on Australian roads. The Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development told the Senate inquiry into this bill that:

… during the 12 months to September 2011, 230 people died from 204 fatal crashes involving heavy vehicles or buses and there is significant evidence linking such accidents with fatigue.

This program funded rest stops along highways to provide more options for drivers to take a break. The first two rounds of the HVSPP provided $70 million in the period 2008-09 to 2011-12. In the 2012 and 2013 budgets, Labor provided a further $250 million to extend the program. This additional funding in 2013-14 brought total spending on the program to $320 million and added a further 58 projects to the 236 projects already delivered, including over 140 new or upgraded rest areas and 46 new or upgraded parking and decoupling bays.

Round 3 projects included funding the states and territories in six categories: rest area projects which improve the provision of heavy vehicle rest areas on key interstate routes; parking and decoupling bay projects which provide heavy vehicle parking and decoupling areas and facilities in outer urban and regional areas; technology trial projects which include trial technologies to improve heavy vehicle safety and/or productivity; road enhancement projects which enhance the capacity and/or safety of roads, including bridges, to allow access by high productivity vehicles to more of the road network; demonstration projects which facilitate innovation to improve heavy vehicle safety and productivity projects; and livestock transport industry projects which improve heavy vehicle safety and productivity for specific livestock transport operations. I urge those opposite and the crossbench members to pass these amendments to make roads safer for truck drivers and for the general public.

While I am summing up my contribution to this debate, I would like to say that one of the pettiest aspects of this bill is that it renames the Nation Building Program (National Land Transport) Act to remove the words 'Nation Building'. Those opposite are so concerned about the positive legacy of the Labor government in infrastructure that they want to rename the act to wipe away Labor's connection with it. How petty can they be? The shadow minister, Mr Albanese, has sought assurances in writing from the new minister that there will be no additional cost to taxpayers because of this change of name and the minister has given that assurance. It will be interesting to see how they deal with changing all the letterheads, all the signs and everything else at no extra cost. All we can hope is that they will not choose to put the signs with the new program name in Liberal-National Party colours, as they did with the AusLink program. I really hope they will not stoop to such a petty, disgusting waste of taxpayers resources—again—to try to make themselves look good.

Labor has shown time and time again that we are the party of infrastructure. I have listed the various projects we undertook and funded. I urge the Senate to pass the opposition's amendments to this bill.

Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Bilyk and others for their contributions. I was taken by the latter part of Senator Bilyk's contribution, when she said that we were trying to take away the 'positive legacy'—I think those were her words—of the former Labor government in infrastructure. I think we are seeing that legacy being played out in today's front-page stories about the NBN and the way Labor handled that infrastructure project. Infrastructure development under the former government was a joke. It was done on the back of a beer coaster on VIP flights, it was done without cost-benefit analysis and it cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars extra—because this former Labor government simply did not do the work.

We take a very different approach to infrastructure and the bill we are debating today is part of that. The Land Transport Infrastructure Amendment Bill 2014 is part of our plan to fix the mess we have inherited and to deliver on the things we said we would deliver on. We said we would stop the boats, we said we would get rid of unnecessary and toxic taxes like the carbon tax, we said we would get the budget under control and we said we would build the roads of the 21st century—and that is what this bill is about. It is about rolling that out. It is extraordinary that the Labor Party are doing all they can to frustrate a roads agenda, an agenda of building infrastructure for the 21st century. It is extraordinary that a party that designed the NBN on the back of a beer coaster, costing taxpayers tens of billions of dollars extra, now seeks to frustrate a government seeking to deliver infrastructure properly. That is what this is about.

Infrastructure is key to Australia's competitiveness. Our future depends on it. Better infrastructure underpins vital services, such as transport and logistics. Inefficient infrastructure networks are one of the key reasons Australia's productivity has declined. Inefficient infrastructure networks are also a key driver of the cost-of-living pressures affecting Australians. The government is committed to building the infrastructure of the 21st century and the changes in the Land Transport Infrastructure Amendment Bill will help us to achieve this goal. Our ability to deliver more appropriate, efficient and effective infrastructure will significantly influence Australia's future growth and maximise our competitiveness.

The government is working with state and territory governments to deliver nationally significant infrastructure projects to maximise our productivity and improve living standards for all Australians. We are also working, where possible, in partnership with the private sector to maximise private capital investment in infrastructure projects. This collaboration between the Australian government, the states and territories and the private sector will enable the efficient and successful delivery of the infrastructure that Australia expects, that industry needs and that our communities deserve.

This bill, which amends the Nation Building Program (National Land Transport) Act 2009, is necessary to facilitate our ambitious land transport infrastructure agenda. We are committed to delivering the infrastructure of the 21st century. This bill continues the vitally important $2.1 billion Roads to Recovery program, which funds and supports local governments to carry out upgrades and maintenance on local roads.

We are committed to the Roads to Recovery program, which was established under the Howard government. It is through our commitment that we have allocated $2.1 billion over the next five years of the program, including a doubling of funding next financial year to every local government in Australia. The purpose of the additional funding to the program is to assist in addressing the backlog of local road maintenance across the country. Chief Executive of the New South Wales Livestock and Bulk Carriers Association, Andrew Higginson, was quoted by the ABC as stating that the delay in providing certainty about this funding could have significant flow-on effects for businesses. He said:

It makes it impossible for people to actually go out and build the roads we want, even when the money is allocated.

You might have a local industry who could benefit greatly from an improved road and if that fund is not flowing through the local council, it could put that industry, or that particular producer, out of business.

A month delay, two month delay—the compounding effects of that can be disastrous for any industry.

The amendments proposed by Labor and the Greens, which the government deems unacceptable, include wanting to enshrine the name of the Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Program in the act. These projects are already funded under the act and budgeted for, and including a new separate part is nothing more than unnecessary duplication. Labor and the Greens also want to further complicate things by inappropriately creating an additional role for Infrastructure Australia in this bill. This act has nothing to do with the administrative arrangements of Infrastructure Australia, and so this amendment makes no sense whatsoever.

The coalition government is committed to reducing red tape, as has been evidenced by our red tape repeal days, as well as our commitment to cut $1 billion in red tape every year. This bill works to assist our deregulation agenda by repealing three spent land transport infrastructure acts. The government understands just how important road safety is for all Australians and how important this funding is to local road improvement programs and to our economy. Both the Labor Party and the Greens refused to support this bill in the other place, but they were unable to point to a single aspect of the bill that was unacceptable. This is nothing more than deliberate obstructionism.

The primary intent of the Land Transport Infrastructure Amendment Bill 2014 is to continue vital funding to programs such as the Roads to Recovery program—something that the former minister for infrastructure, Mr Albanese, failed to provide for when he was the minister. The expiration date was left by Labor at 30 June 2014, leaving local councils with no certainty whatsoever. The Labor Party and the Greens need to stop playing political games and support the passage of this very simple legislation. If Labor and the Greens were serious about delivering for councils and reducing the amount of red tape interference, they would simply pass this bill unamended.

As the chair of the ACT Consultative Panel for the Black Spot Programme, I am very keen to see this bill pass as it also continues funding to this vitally important program. The Black Spot Program provides funding to address road sites that are high-risk areas for serious crashes. It is a key part of the commitment to reduce crashes on Australian roads, save lives and reduce road trauma by funding measures such as traffic signals, roundabouts and increased signage at dangerous locations to reduce the risk of crashes. These programs are incredibly effective, saving the community many times the cost of the relatively minor road improvements that are implemented. An evaluation by the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics recently estimated that the program reduces casualty crashes at treated sites by 30 per cent.

I was pleased last month to be able to announce that the ACT would receive $1.1 million to upgrade and fix a number of dangerous black spots in our community. Here in the ACT additional funding of $452,000 has been made to install traffic signals at Jerrabomberra Avenue, Captain Cook Crescent and Sturt Avenue in order to fix a dangerous intersection, address a proven history of crashes and prevent the loss of life. Here in the ACT we are taking pre-emptive action through the Black Spot Program to upgrade signage at the intersection of Coulter Drive and John Cleland Crescent in Florey. We are installing animal fencing, additional reflectors and an upgrade to signage on the Tuggeranong Parkway, from Lady Denman Drive to Cotter Road Ramp East. And we are installing a high-angle approach for left-hand turns out of Well Station Road, as well as the upgrade of existing traffic signals at the intersection of Gungahlin Drive and Well Station Road in Mitchell. All of these measures are being put in place through the Black Spot Program to reduce crashes, to prevent road trauma, to save lives and to improve road safety.

I was pleased to see that the 2014 budget allocated an additional $1.6 million to the ACT for the Black Spot Program. I will continue to engage widely with the ACT community to investigate potential locations that could be fixed under the Black Spot Program in order to maximise its effectiveness and potential here in my community. Nationally, the government's commitment also provides an additional $200 million over two years for this program. This totals a record $500 million to the Black Spot Program allocated by the coalition in the 2014 budget.

Importantly—and this has been touched on by Senator Bilyk—this bill also renames the Nation Building Program (National Land Transport) Act 2009 to the National Land Transport Act 2014, removing the link between the name of the act and the name of the land transport infrastructure funding program. We should not be politicising the name of the Infrastructure Investment Programme from within the act. This change keeps the name of the act above politics. It also means that we will not need to amend the act should the name of the land transport infrastructure funding program change.

The bill also aims to streamline and enhance the operation of the act, which will directly benefit the states and territories and the Commonwealth. A new requirement is being implemented that the states and territories will notify the minister as soon as possible after the sale or disposal of land that was acquired using Australian government funding. By doing so, we will ensure a timely response to land sales and disposals from both the states and the territories and the Australian government. This will mean that the proceeds of the sale or disposal can then be allocated to new infrastructure projects.

This bill also introduces a new type of project that can receive funding. Under the bill, projects that involve research, investigations, studies or analysis of investment or black spot projects, previously funded Off-Network Projects and works funded under the Roads to Recovery program will be eligible for funding. Additionally, to help inform advice to government, this funding will also be able to be used for analysis of projects submitted for consideration for funding as investment or black spot projects.

Lastly, the bill adds two types of eligible funding recipients to the act. Partnerships have been added as eligible for funding, the purpose of which is to simplify funding arrangements for firms without a body corporate structure. Non-corporate Commonwealth entities whose functions include research relating to land transport research operations will also now be able to receive funding under these changes.

The bill ensures that local governments get their $2.1 billion in Roads to Recovery funding, providing certainty into the future. It ensures that we remain consistent with our red-tape reduction agenda and it also works to support a number of other measures, such as the Black Spot Program.

Labor and the Greens need to do the right thing by their electorates and their communities and pass this bill. As a government we will continue to stand up for local communities, we will continue to build the infrastructure of the 21st century and we will continue to fix Labor's debt and deficit disaster. I strongly support the passage of this bill.

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am absolutely delighted to support this bill, the Land Transport Infrastructure Amendment Bill 2014, and I urge all senators to agree to the passage of the bill without amendment and without further delay. It would have come into this chamber in the last sitting fortnight of the previous session of parliament had there not been a very strong indication that it was not going to pass at that time. I hope, over the last five weeks, there was the opportunity for reflection by senators on all sides and for speaking to their constituents, particularly those in rural and regional areas of Australia. They, like me, would have been lobbied very strongly by local governments around Australia to pass this bill without delay.

As has been said previously, the actual funding for the Roads to Recovery program notionally expired on 30 June 2014, so at the moment there is a cloud and some uncertainty over the continuation of that program. I will not go to discussions of the changing of the name, because it was canvassed earlier in this place. What I do want to do is affirm the commitment of our Prime Minister, Mr Abbott; he has made the very strong statement that he wants to be known as 'the infrastructure Prime Minister'. All of those strategies and policies are being put into place to give effect to that commitment. The last thing this place needs and the last thing the Australian community, and road users in particular, need is to see that frustrated and thwarted if it is being done just for cheap, political purposes. This issue is far too important to be tied up in that sort of nonsense.

Through the Infrastructure Investment Program, over the coming six-year period the government is committing some $35½ billion to road and rail projects across Australia. Others have spelt them out. I want to focus on two of them—that is, the $686 million to finish the Gateway WA project around Perth Airport and the $615 million committed to build the Swan Valley bypass on the Perth to Darwin highway.

In recent days I have travelled up to Darwin and back to Perth; out to the airport again to travel to Esperance and then back to Perth; and then again within a few hours back to the airport to travel to Canberra. On each of those occasions I have had the opportunity to see the wonderful work that is being undertaken in the development of the Gateway WA project. It also emphasises, as we all know, that Western Australia is the powerhouse of the Australian economy. We know that the use of airports and the frequency of air travel underpin and speak to the enormous activity being undertaken.

Whilst it certainly is frustrating the movement of traffic, I wish to place on the record the tremendous accord that I have with, and my congratulations to, those responsible for giving effect to these engineering projects. How they are able to coordinate continually the movement of road traffic, vehicular traffic and heavy transport traffic to those air hubs and logistics hubs around our airports whilst at the same time undertaking this massive work, I think, deserves enormous credit. Those who have been in Perth recently may have travelled on the new, upgraded Great Eastern Highway into the city. Again, whilst it inconvenienced us, the fact that they were able to get on and get that work done and still allow those roads to remain open was tremendous. So I congratulate the government on its continuing efforts. I understand from Comcare drivers—in whose currency of knowledge I have enormous faith—that it will be towards the end of 2015 that we will see that finished.

The second project to which I referred is the Swan Valley bypass on the Perth to Darwin highway. Of course, there is no longer coastal shipping activity from Fremantle or Cockburn Sound going north for a lot of general cargo. There is, naturally, for completion of the major offshore gas projects at Gorgon and Wheatstone; but, unfortunately, coastal trade is no longer available for general cargo so it all now goes on roads. We in WA and those who have visited have all been grossly inconvenienced by the movement of enormously heavy vehicles carrying the components they do that will continue to drive the economy of Australia by supporting projects to the north and up to Darwin. It speaks volumes about the need for the Swan Valley bypass and, indeed, we just cannot get that work completed too quickly.

I turn to Roads to Recovery. Nobody should underestimate the value of this project, commenced under the Howard government and continued in the years of the Rudd and Gillard governments. What we are trying to do here—this is central to this bill that is before us today—is to guarantee continued funding to local governments so they can get on with their work. My colleagues earlier—perhaps Senator Rice, also Senator MacDonald and I think Senator Bilyk—referred to the value that local governments place on the Roads to Recovery funding. More to the point, it is locked in years in advance. By committing $2.1 billion over five years, the government has doubled funding for next financial year to every council in Australia. I think that is a recognition by the government of the value of this funding.

Why is this funding arrangement so valuable? Because every council in Australia will tell you that when Commonwealth funding is assured they can then add their own locally sourced funds—and state-sourced funds, if they have them. Every dollar is driven further, is utilised better, in terms of the effectiveness and the efficiency of the projects being funded. For example, if they are undertaking roadworks they can ensure that, by mobilising and not having to demobilise and start again, they can lay more tar and improve roads and shoulders, and they can provide the quality of roads that the community expects. We know, because of geographic circumstances, weather situations and pressure of use of roads, there are different challenges in different areas of Australia. There is no better project or funding in the view of local governments around Australia, supported by the federal government of the day, than the Roads to Recovery program. But it is at risk at the moment. I absolutely implore senators who have any interest—and I know we all do—in the future of our road networks to pass this bill without delay.

Mention has been made of black spot funding, and it is my understanding that the bill introduces a new type of project that can receive funding under part 4 of the act—Transport Development and Innovation Projects. These are projects, as the Deputy Prime Minister has said, that involve research, investigations, studies or analyses of investment relating to and including black spot projects—and how successful has the black spot concept been around Australia. So it will then be the case that those sorts of projects previously funded off network, funded under the Roads to Recovery program, will be eligible for part 4 funding. This amendment will enhance the management of projects and the Infrastructure Investment Program. Again, that is what we want to see in this country—we want to see maximum value for taxpayers' money in developing projects of value to the Australian community.

I cannot emphasise enough that we in this place and the media all too often make the comment that it is the government's money. Governments of themselves have no money. The money that they accumulate is accrued from taxpayers, company profits and interest on investments. Governments do not have money. Therefore it is incumbent on us as legislators to ensure that money is spent as wisely and as prudently and as frugally as it can be for the purposes for which it is allocated. We need to honour our commitment to Australian taxpayers—whether they pay through direct income taxes, taxes through GST, company profits or however else they are sourced—that we will spend their money as effectively as we possibly can.

As an aside, those young people looking down would have no idea that one of the effects of this bill will be the repeal of the Railway Standardisation (New South Wales and Victoria) Agreement Act 1958. I suspect that you, Mr Acting Deputy President, may not have been around when that was implemented. As we all know, we had the unusual circumstance up and down the east coast of Australia that the gauge of the railways in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria were all different. I recall one of the gauges being 5' 3", the standard gauge is 4' 8½" and the narrow gauge is 3'6". How ridiculous must it have been for somebody to board the 5' 3" gauge train in Brisbane, get as far as the border, unload themselves, their goods, their family and whatever else and get onto the 4' 8½", and then travel through New South Wales on the standard gauge only to repeat the whole exercise in Albury-Wodonga. In our own state of Western Australia, we had, and still do in many instances, the narrow gauge—the 3' 6". This bill repeals that particular agreement act of 1958, because the last loan repayments to the federal government were received in June 2013. So the loan has been repaid, and there is no longer any need for that element of legislation to be in place.

I understand from Senator Bilyk's contribution and that of Senator Rice that there will be amendments moved. The first one relates to the concept of a role for Infrastructure Australia in assessment. This is not what this bill is about. The issue associated with Infrastructure Australia casting its slide rule over projects and auditing them for the purposes of ascertaining effectiveness and allocating priority et cetera is worthy but it is not the subject of this bill. There is no case for holding up passage of the Land Transport Infrastructure Amendment Bill because of an element that is totally and utterly irrelevant. So let us not to be confused about that element: it is not before the chamber, and it is not part of this exercise. It simply adds to the confusion and delays the inevitable—we hope—passage of this bill. The claim has been made that Labor and the Greens want to complicate the arrangements and inappropriately create an additional role for Infrastructure Australia in this bill when, as I have just said, the act has nothing to do with the administrative arrangements. It makes no sense. It adds to red tape. It is relevant in other legislation but not relevant in this legislation, and it therefore should be dealt with in other fora—and not dealt with in this one.

Other amendments to this particular legislation have been proposed in the other place by the honourable Anthony Albanese—amendments which, again, the government does not accept—to enshrine the name of the Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Program into the act. Again, these matters are dealt with in different jurisdictions and therefore it is not necessary for them to be introduced into this bill.

In my concluding comments, I say this: the central component of Roads to Recovery is critical to all Australians. For those involved in local government, it underpins their roads programs—their roads maintenance and roads development programs. And—as I am sure my two colleagues, Senator Fawcett and Senator Johnston, would agree, both coming from states with large road networks—those programs are absolutely critical to ongoing maintenance, and to the ongoing efficiency and effectiveness of the overall spend on roads in those local governments. So I urge all senators in this place to put to one side those sorts of activities that may have been amusing or distracting but may, in fact, have taken us away from the essential elements of this bill. It is simple: it requires passage. I can assure you, Mr Acting Deputy President, that every local government around this country is watching and waiting, and hoping that common sense prevails and that the bill is passed.

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Back.

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Payments) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak on the Land Transport Infrastructure Amendment Bill. I say to Senator Back, through you, Mr Acting Deputy President, not only are the Labor Party amendments needed but also that they are critical to ensuring that we get the best spend for infrastructure in Australia—through those amendments. Because, simply, this government cannot be trusted to spend the money where it is actually needed, and I will talk about that further through my contribution.

For those following this debate, it might seem hard to understand what, exactly, we are debating. In the other place, the minister claimed that this bill was about 'delivering the government's ambitious land transport infrastructure agenda'. This statement just highlights this government's complete lack of vision when it comes to investing in crucial nation-building infrastructure. This bill seeks to change the name of the Nation Building Program (National Land Transport) Act 2009 to the Land Transport Act 2014, and it also eliminates some out-of-date provisions in the existing legislation. I would not say that this constitutes 'delivering', nor that it can be considered 'ambitious'. The other thing that this bill seeks to do is extend funding for the Roads to Recovery program. This formalises the Labor government's decision in the 2013 budget to continue the existing Roads to Recovery program beyond 30 June of this year—that is a $350 million program which expired on June 30 because of this government's incompetence and inability to manage their own legislative agenda.

Labor will be seeking to make two amendments to this bill. The first Labor amendment will require consultation with Infrastructure Australia before projects are approved, and will provide greater transparency around the decision-making. There has been much debate in this place on the need for transparency in relation to infrastructure spending. Many stakeholders in the infrastructure debate have called for greater transparency and accountability around decisions on how the Commonwealth government spends its infrastructure funds. In response to the views of stakeholders, Labor's first amendment requires the minister to seek the views of the government's infrastructure expert adviser, Infrastructure Australia, before approving funds for a project. Labor's amendment will also require a full evaluation by Infrastructure Australia of any project above $100 million in value. Finally, this amendment would require that, in approving funds for a project, the minister must make public not only Infrastructure Australia's findings on the priority of the project but also its evaluation of cost-benefit. Those opposite should be supportive of the Labor amendments, given that only four days before the election Mr Abbott said that no infrastructure projects worth more than $100 million would be funded without a published cost-benefit analysis. We already know that that commitment has been broken, along with a lot of other commitments and promises that have been broken by this government.

The second Labor amendment would formalise the Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Program as a program under the act. The Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Program is an initiative taken under the former Labor government. The program targets infrastructure around heavy vehicle driver fatigue, and funds rest stops along highways to provide more options for drivers to take a break. In its current form, this bill—like all of this government's infrastructure policy—is just spin. The change of the name, with the removal of the term 'nation-building' from the statute books, seems little more than an attempt to remove any hint of the former Labor government from the infrastructure debate; any hint of the work that the former Labor government did on infrastructure; and any hint of the investment that the former Labor government made into nation-building infrastructure for Australia.

I can understand why those opposite might seek to do that. For a government with no real vision for infrastructure investment, the Labor Party's record on investment would be intimidating. I have had a number of representations from local councils concerned about future funding for Roads to Recovery. This concern is a result of scaremongering by those opposite. Labor does, and always has, supported the Roads to Recovery program. The simple truth of the situation, as set out in the 2013-14 Commonwealth budget papers, is that the Labor government extended Roads to Recovery funding across the forward estimates. Labor allocated $1.75 billion in the 2013-14 budget for the next five years of the program; it is already budgeted for for the next five years. However, the first quarterly payment for this financial year, which is due to be paid to councils next month, is in limbo because the government would not agree to the sensible amendments proposed by Labor that would have increased transparency in major infrastructure investments. That is why the member for Grayndler, Anthony Albanese, yesterday sought to introduce a private member's bill in the other place that would amend existing legislation to extend Roads to Recovery. Yesterday Mr Albanese sought to bring on debate on his private member's bill and give councils the certainty they want by extending this program. However, the Abbott government opposed even debating the legislation. They shut down a move by Mr Albanese on his private member's bill. They would not even allow debate on his bill.

Not only has the incompetency of those opposite prevented the Roads to Recovery program being extended before it expired on 30 June 2014. Now their sheer stubbornness has seen them reject Labor's attempt to sort this issue out. Labor understands how critical investment in infrastructure such as roads and rail is for the economic development of this country. Labor understands how critical it is to make the right investment in the right infrastructure projects. That is why Labor doubled the roads budget to $46.5 billion and upgraded 7½ thousand kilometres of road, lifted local government road grants by 20 per cent, invested $3.4 billion in rail freight network over six years, rebuilt more than a third of the rail network—that is 4,000 kilometres of track—and committed more investment in urban rail infrastructure than all predecessors. Labor understands the importance of these nation-building projects, and has invested in our vision for the country.

In my home state of Tasmania people know how important investment in critical infrastructure is for economic development. Unfortunately, those opposite have failed the people of Tasmania and have tried to fool them by reannouncing infrastructure projects in the budget. They reannounced our entire nation-building package, including the same funding for the freight rail revitalisation, for the Brooker Highway and for the Huon Highway. In fact, the only new thing in the budget for Tasmanian infrastructure was a cut—a cut of $100 million to the funding of the Midland Highway. Labor had committed $500 million over 10 years for this critical project, and now there is only $400 million. This is something that Minister Truss is apparently proud of, as he highlighted this project in his second reading speech on the bill we are debating here today. I might say that Senator Abetz also seems very proud of the fact that there was a cut of $100 million from the Midland Highway.

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

That is disgraceful!

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Payments) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is exactly right, Senator Bilyk. It is disgraceful. And that is from the government of our self-appointed infrastructure Prime Minister. Labor has a strong record of investment in crucial infrastructure projects, and Labor's record contrasts starkly with that of those opposite. Since coming to government those opposite have spoken of a grand vision for infrastructure, but it appears to be no more than a mirage. Not only have they failed to deliver funding for the Roads to Recovery program, but they have also cut $1 billion from the Commonwealth road funding to local councils. Councils all over the country will receive a real cut in real terms this year because of the government's short-sighted decision to freeze annual indexation of the financial assistance grants. These cuts to financial assistance grants will leave local councils with less money to maintain roads as well as delivering local community service.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is not true.

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Payments) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is absolutely true, Senator Williams. You have obviously not been getting your mail from your local councils.

Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Brown, I will get you to address the chair, and I will ask Senator Williams not to interject.

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Payments) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He does it all the time.

Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I cannot comment on what he does all the time. I am just asking him not to interject now.

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Payments) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you for your protection from Senator Williams!

Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very happy to help!

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Payments) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

These actions are in line with the legacy of Mr Howard's 12 years in government. The Howard government left its mark on Australia's investment in infrastructure with the largest infrastructure deficit in this nation's history. The Howard government hardly spent anything on infrastructure. It did not spend it for the economic development of this nation. Under the Howard government, 90 per cent of roads funding in my home state of Tasmania went to two electorates, both held by Liberal Party members. It seems this is a lesson the Abbott government has taken to heart. Since coming to office this government has taken a new approach to infrastructure funding, which could best be described as slashing, cutting, reannouncing and pork barrelling. Those opposite, led by Mr Abbott and Mr Truss, have travelled around the country shamelessly reannouncing Labor projects such as the Gateway Upgrade North in Brisbane and the Bruce and Pacific Highway upgrades, claiming them as coalition projects. They have done the same with Labor's inland rail project, claiming it as a coalition project. They have also scrapped billions in Labor funding for critical transport infrastructure projects such as the Perth public transport system, Brisbane's Cross River Rail project, the Melbourne Metro and Adelaide's Tonsley Park public transport project. Mr Abbott has committed to Melbourne's East West Link and Sydney's WestConnex project. However, this has been done without cost-benefit analysis—in defiance, as I mentioned earlier, of his own election promise. Those opposite obviously do not understand how transformative investment in crucial infrastructure is for our nation's cities, for our regional areas and for our economic development.

Those opposite, led by Mr Abbott, appear to think that infrastructure funding is about buying votes in marginal electorates rather than making critical nation-building investments. In fact, we have already seen the start of this type of pork-barrelling from them in Mr Abbott's budget. An analysis of the budget's infrastructure spending by Fairfax media found that coalition electorates are favoured for new money by a ratio of three to one. In comparison, the analysis found that the majority of projects which lost federal funding after the 2013 election were in non-Liberal electorates.

It is clear that the government are already ignoring the professional and independent advice of Infrastructure Australia, and it will only get worse if this bill passes. In a Sydney Morning Herald article on 12 June, Monash University professor of transport Graham Currie said:

... whether they—

the government—

want to be a professional government or they want to pork barrel, and whether we'll forge the idea of trying to be professional about how we manage resources or just do it on a political basis.

He then went on to say:

I don't think that's how a country should be run.

This bill makes the answer to Professor Currie's question clear.

Stopping this type of politically motivated behaviour was one of the purposes of establishing the independent advisory body of Infrastructure Australia, which Labor has fought to protect. That is why, to respond to the questions posed or statements made by senators opposite about Infrastructure Australia, we have put forward this amendment. It is quite clear that this amendment is needed so that Infrastructure Australia's expert advice is sought, the way it should be. It is an independent body. It makes transparent decisions. We need to have it there. This is why we are putting forward this amendment to this bill.

Critical national-building projects are currently under construction right across Australia because of the investment in infrastructure made by the former Labor government. Across the states and territories, and particularly in my home state of Tasmania, vital infrastructure projects initiated by the former Labor government are providing jobs and boosting the economy.

This bill does little more than eliminate the term 'nation building' from the statue books as part of Mr Abbott's agenda of rebadging Labor government programs. It is clear that those opposite have no real vision for transport infrastructure in Australia. I ask the Senate to support the amendment that will be put forward by our shadow minister today.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I hope Senator Brown stays in the chamber because I need to refer to some of the things she said. Senator Brown is correct that the government plans to freeze the financial assistance grants, FAGs, for three years. That is correct. I hope Senator Brown realises that we have a budget problem, a mess we inherited from that lot over there that Senator Brown is part of.

In 2015-16 the Roads to Recovery program will be doubled for local governments. Here is the point: FAGs can be spent on anything. When a council receives a grant, they can put pavers down on a footpath. They can put parks in. But we want to fix our roads. I do not know if Senator Brown has ever driven on a dirt road, but I do every week of my life. Here is the point we are making: we want to fix our roads because the exports we produce need to get to the waterfront. For that, we need some decent roads. I hope Senator Brown stays to hear more of what I have to say, but I do not think she is going to. There is more money for local government because of the doubling of the Roads to Recovery program. That was a National Party initiative under former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson.

While I am referring to senators opposite, I will say that I was surprised that Senator Conroy stayed this morning. I thought he would be too embarrassed to show his face after the release of the coalition's cost-benefit analysis of the National Broadband Network. That is the cost-benefit analysis that Senator Conroy and then Prime Minister Rudd refused to undertake because they knew they would be laughed out of the country if they did. The National Broadband Network is the biggest spending program in our nation's history and no cost-benefit analysis was done. We tried in opposition to get one, but people such as the former member for New England, Tony Windsor, did not want to have the cost-benefit analysis done either. It was a multibillion-dollar program that was devised on the back of a coaster—a coaster, mind you.

Senator Conroy must be close to releasing his own book. We have the Wayne Maxwell Swan book from the former Treasurer. Most of the rest of the Labor hierarchy have pointed the finger at each other about the six-year debacle when they were in government. There is no mateship in the trenches there! I look forward to Senator Conroy's book. What is it going to be called—'A roller-coaster in government' or 'Coming on a coaster near you'? Why didn't they do a cost-benefit analysis when they brought in the NBN? It is because they were afraid of the truth.

The Land Transport Infrastructure Amendment Bill amends the Nation Building Program (National Land Transport) Act 2009. Among other changes, this legislation will allow the Roads to Recovery program to be funded. In the other place, Labor and the Greens opposed the legislation. They opposed the very legislation that has brought so much finance and road improvement to local governments right around our nation. They opposed it. I hope it is not the same with this bill in front of the new Senate where Labor and the Greens, thankfully, do not control the numbers.

In November 2000, the Howard government announced a four-year road funding package worth $1.6 billion, of which $1.2 billion was spent on the Roads to Recovery program. The legislation was introduced by the then Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Transport and Regional Services, the Hon. John Anderson. It was a Nationals initiative.

The new coalition government faced a $47 billion budget deficit for the 2013-14 financial year just past, $123 billion of projected deficits to 2016-17 and a $1 billion interest bill every month on Labor's debt. For those listening on radio, $1 billion rolls off the tongue pretty quickly. But let me give you an example. Senator Abetz gave an example recently in response to a question in question time on the difference between one million and one billion. One million seconds equates to 11½ days—that is not long—but one billion seconds equates to 31.7 years. So when we talk about billions we are talking about huge amounts of money.

Infrastructure spending does not stop under this legislation. There is a $50 billion investment from this government to deliver vital transport infrastructure across Australia for the 21st century. There is $2.5 billion for the Roads to Recovery program to support the maintenance and upgrade of local roads. I live out on one of those local roads—it is a dirt road—and I know the cost to council of maintaining let alone improving those roads, with their corrugations and potholes. That is especially the case after a dry spell, when the dust has been blowing, when the rain falls and there is erosion washing away the sides of the road. There are additional payments of $350 million to councils during the 2015-16 financial year. I put that on top of the FAGs freeze in the principal for three years, but a doubling of the Roads to Recovery money so we can fix our roads. We said we would be a government of infrastructure building, and that is exactly what is happening here.

There will be $565 million provided through the ongoing Black Spot Program. That includes an extra $100 million in both the 2015-16 and 2016-17 financial years. The $300 million Bridges Renewal Program will commence in 2014-15. This program will repair bridges. Mr Acting Deputy President Seselja, go out to regional New South Wales and have a look at the old wooden bridges that have been there for decades. You will see they are narrow and dangerous and need replacing. There will be $200 million over next five years for the Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Program for road enhancements, rest areas and technology trials—especially the rest areas. I have discussed with Senator Sterle, who is a former truckie, how we need more rest areas, so that when the truckies have to take their break, according to their work diary, there is somewhere they can park their rig so they can get off the road safely—hopefully where it is quiet—and have a rest. There is a $314 million investment in 300 projects in local communities through our Community Development Grants Program, which is designed to deliver the coalition's election commitments and some residue projects from the previous government.

The $1 billion National Stronger Regions Fund aims to promote economic development through investment in infrastructure projects at a local level. This is important. The program will help communities with lower than average socioeconomic circumstances and higher than average unemployment by improving local facilities, creating jobs and building needed infrastructure. There is $100 million to fill in black spots in the mobile phone network. It is all right in the cities and the large country towns, where there is a mobile phone network, but there are many areas across regional Australia that need towers to get the signal out there. There are plenty of examples around where I live—for example, Copeton Dam, which is visited by 100,000 people a year for water skiing, camping or whatever, has virtually no mobile signal.

The Australian Local government Association says:

… Roads to Recovery (R2R) program has become an essential element in local government's ability to maintain and upgrade the local roads network. It is an outstanding example of a partnership between the national and local governments and of providing direct funding to local communities.

So why did the Labor Party oppose this bill in the other place? Why is it demanding changes now? It is because Labor wants an additional eight pages of amendments to provide for the Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Program. But this program is already provided for under legislation. It is already there. This government is committed to a number of other programs that are not provided separate status in legislation. If the Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Program with its eight pages of bureaucratic red tape is included, so must be the others, such as the Bridges Renewal Program and the Regional Roads Program. If the Labor Party's amendments were agreed to, funding to this program would be held up because the guidelines under which applicants were applying would be inconsistent with the legislation. We do not want things held up.

This government will require all Commonwealth funded projects worth more than $100 million to undergo a cost-benefit analysis by Infrastructure Australia to ensure the best use of available taxpayers' money. The cut-off point is $100 million. It was not there for the NBN. We will also require Infrastructure Australia to publish justification for all its project recommendations. Infrastructure Australia is getting on with the job without it having to be in legislation. There was a provision in the Infrastructure Australia Amendment Bill 2013 to enable the $100 million threshold to be determined by a disallowable instrument, but the amendments moved by the opposition and ultimately accepted by the Senate on that legislation removed that provision. We will now seek to put the $100 million threshold in the Infrastructure Australia legislation, where it belongs.

A couple of weeks ago I was in the seat of Richmond, in the northern corner of New South Wales, adjoining Queensland, having a look at some of the coalition funded projects, such as the CCTV at Byron Bay. I was quite amazed to be informed of the amount of antisocial behaviour and crime on the streets of Byron Bay. It is a real concern. I also looked at the planned upgrade of Kennedy Drive at Tweed Heads. It is a pretty ordinary bit of bitumen, I can assure you, and it is good to see that $3.3 million will be spent to rebuild that stretch of bitumen. In Richmond, Tweed Shire Council received $6.11 million and Byron Shire $2.65 million under this program, between 2009-10 and 2013-14. I spoke with representatives of both councils. They are concerned that the Roads to Recovery program funding is being held up by the local federal member Justine Elliott and her Labor colleagues for no good reason other than to play politics. They should step back and let it go through.

In the Hunter region of New South Wales, Upper Hunter Shire has received $4.3 million, Singleton Council $2.73 million, Muswellbrook Shire $2.04 million, Cessnock city council $3.82 million and Maitland city council $2.84 million. I received a letter from the Hunter council which expressed fears about the future of the program. Mayor of Upper Hunter Shire, Councillor Michael Johnsen, says it is critical that the program continue, a view he feels would be held by every council in the Hunter region of New South Wales. Councils in the Hunter know the member for Hunter, Joel Fitzgibbon, voted to stop it, but Labor cannot come up with a plausible reason for having done so. Why did they vote against this in the House?

Over the past five years councils in New England were allocated over $30 million in Roads to Recovery funding. I appeal to the cross benches to stop listening to Labor lies. Mr Albanese has apparently told you that unless the heavy vehicle programme is actually named in the legislation it will not continue. That is absolute rubbish and is wrong. Ask yourself why Mr Albanese did not find it necessary to make significant amendments when he created the Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Programme while in government. All he did was change the definition of a 'road' in legislation, because that is all that was needed to establish the program. So ask yourself, cross benchers, why is he now proposing three pages of amendments just on the Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Programme?

This is a very simple bill. Its primary purpose is to extend the Roads to Recovery program, change the name of the bill, and tidy up aspects of the act, which is consistent with the government's red tape reduction agenda. I have long ago given up trying to understand the Greens. It seems they are a leaderless lot on this very issue. The New South Wales Greens want the federal Greens to support the fuel excise increase, but the federal Greens have had several positions. Senator Milne was obviously rolled in the party room on that one. What I cannot understand is that the fuel excise increase is actually a tax on carbon, yet the Greens oppose it after fighting to retain the carbon tax in this place a couple of weeks ago. How do you work that one out? The fuel excise increase should be supported because all of the money will go to road funding, yet here they are again opposing a good program.

So I say again to the cross benches that there are no hidden surprises, no gotcha moments and no hidden clauses with this bill. Don't worry about Mr Albanese's propaganda. Let this go through. I am sure that if you do not let it go through your local government will tell you what they think, if you block this. Ask them to show you some of the projects Roads to Recovery has funded. Talk to the local governments in your states and hear the success stories of the Roads to Recovery program. Ask them if they looking forward to the doubling of the funding in 2015-16. Of course they are. Every council in Australia is. Then tell them that Labor does not want them to have that funding. That is the real issue blocking this. The Land Transport Infrastructure Amendment Bill should be supported so that money can start rolling out now.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I look forward to making my contribution to this debate today on the Land Transport Infrastructure Amendment Bill. Senators in this place should have road safety foremost in their minds, not only for our transport operators but for every single Australian who uses our roads. There are a lot of issues I want to clear up. Firstly, it is no secret that Labor does support the general purpose of the bill. We have no argument with that as it was our legislation and our work in 2009 that created this bill.

The Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Programme should be legislated. I heard Senator Williams going on about not listening to Labor lies, and saying to the cross benches 'Why didn't Minister Albanese legislate it?' I will go further into why Labor believes the amendment should be passed and we should legislate the Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Programme.

There are a couple of points about heavy vehicle road safety that I want to touch on. The Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Programme is another element in the armoury we have to help drive down road deaths and injury. There should absolutely be no argument in this chamber or in the other place about doing whatever we can to reduce road deaths, trauma and injury. This program sits alongside spending on our national network, including record spending on duplicating the Bruce and Pacific highways, which, once again, was initiated by the former Labor government.

Heavy vehicle safety is also being addressed by the new Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal, which is sometimes referred to as the 'safe rates remuneration tribunal', which, no-one will be surprised to hear, I am going to have a bit to say about later. I am also going to have a fair dinkum crack at those on the other side who want to take this away from the road transport industry and thus diminish road safety for other road users in Australia. I will say more on that later. The tribunal was established by the former Labor government. It commenced operations in July 2012. The object of the act is to promote safety and fairness in the road transport industry. I do not see what is hard about that. In fact, I will tell you what is hard about it: it is a disgrace to this nation that it has taken so long to get through. But it is here now for the time being, and that mob over there are going to do everything they can to try to water it down.

The tribunal's role in this area primarily relates to addressing the relationship between remuneration and safety in the industry by, amongst other things, ensuring that road transport drivers do not have remuneration related incentives to work in an unsafe manner—and, my God, they are out there and they are alive. Also, it removes remuneration related incentives, pressures and practices that contribute to unsafe work practices. I challenge any senator who wants to debate this with me publicly to bring it on, because I will tell you that you are on the wrong ground if you think you are going to put up an argument with me that counters what we are saying about road safety and linking road safety to overloading, breaking fatigue management, speeding, and illicit use of drugs. But the offer is there to any one of you. Bring it on. But you will not. You do not have the guts to do it.

The coalition government flagged its intention to eliminate this tribunal, even before its first partial order came into effect, on 1 May this year. They have commissioned an inquiry into the tribunal before it has had a chance to prove its worth as an additional tool to deliver road safety. In describing the tribunal as red tape, the government prefers ideology over finding new ways to save lives on the road.

While I am on a roll discussing the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal, back in June this year Mr Jamie Briggs, the Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, was addressing an Australian Livestock Transport Association conference in Adelaide. I am quoting from ATN magazine, which is a pretty good magazine, too. It says here:

Briggs told the ALRTA conference the Coalition has "always been very uncomfortable" with the tribunal and then added: "I think you can see the direction the government is intending to take."

"We think over-regulation of your industry doesn’t help your outcomes. It just adds cost, it doesn’t improve safety. It just means your businesses are harder to operate."

What a load of bunk! Why didn't he just come straight out and say, 'We will give you every opportunity in the trucking industry to screw around drivers' wages, break every fatigue law, speed, overload and turn a blind eye to illicit drugs.'

Let me just clarify this: I do not think one member of the Australian Livestock and Rural Transporters Association would agree with that statement I just made, but these are words coming from a politician from South Australia. I just want everyone to know his working history. It is a travesty when you get members of parliament who have had absolutely no life experiences and they pertain to be experts in the road transport industry. It really does give me the screaming abdabs.

But I have got to tell you Mr Briggs's work history. He was born in 1977—great, tremendous, no dramas. His employment before coming to parliament was as an employment relations adviser for Business South Australia—whoopee! Then he went on to become a research assistant to the Hon. RI Lucas MLC for a year, then he was adviser to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, the Hon. Kevin Andrews MP, for a year and then he was senior adviser to then Prime Minister, the Hon. JW Howard—

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

He was up to his neck in WorkChoices!

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and as my mate and colleague Senator Gallacher said, he was up to his neck in WorkChoices—for three years. The man has never had a real job. He has never had dirt under his fingernails and would not know what it is like to get out there and actually have to change a tyre at two o'clock in the morning when it is pouring down with rain; but he is an expert in road transport and road safety! What an absolute disgrace. Anyway, I will have a bit more to say about that later.

We will get back to the bill. I just want to quote, while we are talking about road safety, some words of wisdom from the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development. What they said, in terms of the Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Programme under the act, is:

Heavy vehicles are involved in many serious accidents across Australia annually—during the 12 months to September 2011, 230 people died from 204 fatal crashes involving heavy vehicles or buses and there is significant evidence linking such accidents with fatigue. Drivers are also required to comply with heavy vehicle driver fatigue-related legislation which ensures that regular and effective rest breaks are taken during long journeys.

Senator Gallacher and I know that, as we put in a lot of hard work in our former lives as transport workers and also as senior officials with the Transport Workers Union in the transport industry. This is not news to us two; we have been living and breathing it for the last 30-odd years of our lives. It may be news to a few on the other side, particularly those who have never had a real job in their lives but pertain to be experts in the road transport industry.

It also goes on to say:

The size of the heavy vehicle road freight task was 503 billion tonne kilometres in 2008, according to the National Transport Commission (NTC), and this is expected to reach 1,540 billion tonne kilometres by 2050. NTC argues that “improved productivity is the key to reducing the effect of the growing freight task on road safety, the environment and the amenity of our communities”.

They are words of wisdom. I could have told them that. There are no dramas; they only had to ask. But let us go back to what we did and the fears that Labor has in terms of the amendments not being picked up and not being legislated.

You see, in the round 3 criteria—which was under the Labor government—we said that projects that reduce accidents by targeting driver fatigue are of extreme importance. I want to share some examples of round 3 projects that we did do under Labor. Senator Johnston, let us go to your state and my state. Let us talk about WA, shall we? I can tell you, I know all these areas, as you probably do too. If I get it wrong, I am sure you may assist me. I also know that you will agree and I know that you will do everything that you would see fit to make sure that our roads are safe for all road users.

The government contributed $1.5 million to upgrading the Great Northern Highway road train assembly area in Wubin. You could spend another $1.5 million on that before you got it up to scratch, but at least that has been started under a Labor government. And $850,000 was spent in upgrading five rest areas on the Great Northern Highway north of Wubin. Let me tell you, that is only a drop in the ocean. I was in the Kimberley last week. I do that regularly; I am a regular visitor to the Kimberley and have been since 1980. I have to tell you, it is hard for the road train operators to get into a parking bay at this time of the year. Everything up there is big; they are either over width or have three trailers. But you have the grey nomads in there, who will not spend a dime in town but will go and park in a truck bay and camp there for a couple of days. We could do with a hell of a lot more truck bays up here.

But at least there were five of them done at $850,000 under the previous, Labor government. The layover bays on the Great Northern Highway between Port Hedland and Newman were done. That is only one project. You should see the other fine work that was delivered under a Labor government in Port Hedland, which I had an opportunity to look at last Tuesday. There was an upgrade to the existing rest area on SLK 526 on the Eyre Highway and a number of other initiatives.

The wording is the problem that we have with the government at the moment on this bill, because—as I have said—our criteria said that projects that reduce accidents by targeting driver fatigue are our cause. But under the Liberals' round 4 criteria, they have changed the wording to:

… improve the safety environment for heavy vehicles.

What the hell does that mean? This is the fear we have and I want to share this with the chamber. I heard Senator Williams going on to the backbenches, saying, 'Do not be fooled by Labor,' and all that sort of stuff.

The truth of the matter is—and I am not going to be a shrinking violet on this; I have made this very, very clear—I do not trust the other side of the chamber when it comes to weaselling out of road safety programs. I absolutely do not trust the ministers to uphold what they should be upholding in terms of delivering road safety. We have seen that with some fellow who has never had a real job in his life but who claims to be an expert in road transport. He tells people he will water down road safety—he sees it as red tape. But I also do not trust Minister Truss to stick by his commitment to road safety, unless it is legislated in this chamber.

I want to send a message out to Senator Muir. I have had the opportunity to speak to Senator Muir. I am privileged to have had the opportunity to speak with Senator Muir's chief of staff, who, like me and Senator Gallacher, is an ex-truckie and actually gets the importance of road safety. This may not come up again. Senator Muir has six years in this building at this stage; he may get another six years—I hope he does. But, Senator Muir, you have to understand that you may not have the opportunity to correct the ship. Along with other crossbench senators, this is now the time to support Labor's amendments, as I know the Greens will. I want the Palmer United Party to understand this. Why should the minister have the final say? We should trust the parliament; we should not trust individual ministers with road safety.

Here is another reason why—and I am going to make this very, very clear: one of the major pushes for the abolition of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal has come from none other than Coles, the supermarket. Surprise, surprise, Coles have got a problem. Coles do not want transport operators to be safe. Coles have problems because our drivers have to have fatigue management breaks. Coles have problems—they will not say it, but why else would they want to kill off the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal?—because truckies have to be paid properly. If truckies are paid properly, truckies will not have the incentive to speed, to break speed limits to make a dollar or, even worse, just to meet their basic commitments in fuel payments, insurance payments, truck payments, maintenance and tyres. Coles have a problem with the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal because it also takes away the incentive for truck drivers to seek to use illicit drugs. I did not say Coles were supporting or promoting illicit drugs, but why in hell would a major user of transport have a problem with truck drivers being remunerated properly? Why would they have a problem with truck drivers carting legal limits, legal loads? Why would they have a problem with other road users making sure that they are absolutely protected due to our truckies being protected when they are paid properly and they are rested? I rest my case. I do not see the reason for this.

There is this bulldust about red tape. Call it what you like, but when my kids and my wife are out on the road I want the truck coming towards them to be driven by a truck driver who is remunerated properly, who is carting legal load limits, who is not using illicit drugs and who does not have to speed or shortcut on repairs, maintenance and tyres. You can call it what you like—I do not care what you call it—but to hide behind red tape is an insult to the transport industry and an insult to the road safety industry. Every person in this chamber and in the other place should condemn the ridiculous statements made by people who have no idea but who are getting paid a nice little wage because they are a parliamentary secretary or an Assistant Treasurer. It really irks me.

If Mr Briggs has a problem, I welcome the opportunity to tour the country with Mr Briggs. There is the offer, if he is listening. Let's debate it. He and I can get into a debate, but we are not going to hide behind the apron strings of Coles, behind the apron strings of major transport companies who do not want to pay their drivers properly or behind the apron strings of other users. Debate me, but debate me with community people. You name the place, Mr Briggs, and you name the time—I will be there debating with you. You put forward your case and I will put forward my case as to why we should have a Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal, why we should make sure that every Australian has an opportunity to go to work or to go visiting or whatever and know that Australia's truckies are rested properly and paid properly and that the use of illicit drugs is stamped out. There is the challenge.

We have heard a number of statements about how great the government is and, yes, we all support these things and we all want to work together, but we have to put it in context. If all sides of the chamber—the crossbenchers, the Greens, Labor and the Liberal-National coalition—agree, what do they have to fear about letting the parliament be the judge? What is there to fear about amending this piece of legislation by taking this decision out of the hands of the minister? We have seen other examples. Minister Truss may have some problem with this, but I also remember in 2004-05—I was not a senator in 2004—that there was a fair bit of pork-barrelling going on. The Australian National Audit Office found 17 shocking examples of pork-barrelling. I am not saying that that was all involving Minister Truss; other ministers were in that portfolio before him. But Minister Truss picked up the last six or eight months in the portfolio. This is the sad part. If it is not controlled by the parliament and it is the hands of one minister, it could be twisted, it could be moved aside, and certain elements could be de-prioritised. When I see the wording of the coalition's round 4 criteria state in brackets that they want to improve the safety environment for heavy vehicles, that does not give me any comfort at all.

I say to all those out there listening: put on the hat of your parents or your brothers or sisters. My son is a truckie. He is out there every night on the North West Coastal Highway or the Brand Highway or the Great Northern Highway. I know that he works for a reputable firm. He works for Western Australia's largest transport company, where the truck drivers are paid on their fatigue management book. They cannot diddle their hours. They also have cameras in the cabs and they have GPS. If they—the largest transport company in Western Australia, which is privately owned—do not have grief with paying their truck drivers properly, if they do not have grief with making their truck drivers have fatigue management breaks and telling their clients, 'If you want us to provide your transport services, these are the laws and regulations that you must work in,' why the hell are the likes of Coles, ably abetted by junior ministers who have no idea, pushing to get rid of or water down Australia's road safety legislation? We will not be supporting the bill.

Lee Rhiannon (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I congratulate Senator Janet Rice on taking over the transport portfolio, and I look forward to working with her in this area. She has set out the Greens' very clear case on the Land Transport Infrastructure Amendment Bill. I reiterate the Greens' support for Roads to Recovery and black spot funding to improve safety and access on our roads. Some of my work in the portfolio of local government crosses over into this area. When I was in the New South Wales parliament, I saw how important road maintenance and road safety issues are to local government. It is an area of politics where some very important work is undertaken.

Constitutional recognition of local government is relevant to this discussion. Constitutional recognition is needed for many reasons, but one reason is to ensure that funding for local roads continues to flow. I again put on the record how disappointing it is that the issue of constitutional recognition of local government seems to have fallen off the political agenda of this government; it did appear when they were in opposition that they were not really committed to it. It is something that we need to continue to raise. If you want surety of roads funding for local government, it is most definitely relevant.

Over the past few months since the introduction of this bill, the coalition government—particularly the National Party, I have noticed—have been running some ugly politics, trying to accuse the Greens and Labor of undermining road safety because we would not simply wave the legislation through. That really is low, insulting and cheap politics. We have just heard Senator Glenn Sterle set out very clearly how important it is to have safety on our roads and how relevant this issue is not only for truck drivers but for all road users. For any members who did not hear all of the senator's speech, I would recommend it, because he set out the need for good rest breaks and decent pay for truck drivers and how important it is to stamp out illicit drug use. These are critical issues that serve as a real reminder of why we need decent regulations. This government is trying to run down these regulations, which then becomes a real safety issue. So if we are talking about safety, those factors also need to be taken into consideration.

While we are talking about road safety and local councils, it is also relevant to remember what happened in the government's first budget brought down in May this year. There we saw $1 billion ripped out of local government funding. Regional councillors and communities from many country areas have contacted me about this. They are really concerned about the way the government is handling local councils. Often within those messages there were comments about what this would mean for road safety, for road maintenance and for jobs in those country areas. Often the area with the biggest job allocation in local councils is road maintenance. That has been spelled out to me time and time again. The Municipal Association of Victoria have estimated that regional and rural communities could be hardest hit by the cuts. Again, Senator Rice pointed this out very clearly in her contribution. The President of the Municipal Association of Victoria, Bill McArthur, stated:

Commonwealth financial assistance grants are a core revenue stream for local government. The grants provide up to 27 per cent of rural councils’ total funding so rural communities will suffer a massive impact.

The local government associations of Queensland and South Australia have also detailed how regional and rural councils will be hit hard by this massive budget cut. The President of the Australian Local Government Association really nailed the impact on local roads in regional and rural areas, when she said:

These grants are used to maintain a great range of infrastructure including local roads, bridges …

There you have the importance of that government money for roads and bridges—$1 billion of that now ripped out—identified by these peak organisations that bring together our local councils and shires.

When we come to the debate about transport, the role of councils and the money that they are losing are very relevant issues. While the government is slashing vital support to regional councils, it is delivering billions of dollars to private motorway projects that will not improve congestion but will boost the profits of private developers. This is very relevant to this debate. It is essential that the money flows for road upgrades where they are needed because of safety issues. Meanwhile, we have a much greater flow of money into the hands of private motorway developers—clearly a section of the business community that is very close to the Nationals and the Liberals at both federal and state levels. The Abbott government have announced $3.5 billion in funding to the WestConnex, a private tollway in Sydney. They have done that despite the New South Wales government—their own Liberal-National colleagues at the state level—refusing to release the business case. The government are handing over that money while the community cannot find the details of who is going to benefit or whether there is any benefit at all.

Questioning in Senate estimates exposed the lack of confidence Infrastructure Australia has in the WestConnex project. This is largely because details and costs have been kept hidden. This is becoming a real theme with the development of urban motorways in this country. So it is not surprising that the Cross City Tunnel and the Lane Cove Tunnel, two big urban motorway projects in Sydney, have gone belly-up and into receivership. There have been similar problems with Brisbane tollways as well. So the evidence is in that there is a major problem with how these business cases play out. What do we see here? We do not see the government being transparent, being open with the public about the problems they are confronting. Even if they go ahead with their motorways, how are they going to make them work financially? You would have to assume that the reason they are being secretive is that they cannot argue the case.

I have set out the amount of money, coming in at $3.5 billion, for WestConnex. The secretive way they are handling the business case is a repeat of what happened with the east-west tollway in Melbourne. The federal Liberal-National government has committed $3 billion. What do we see? Another project with a secret business case and another project that has been rejected by the local community. I very much congratulate the communities around the proposed WestConnex project and the proposed east-west tollway for getting out there and informing people about the reality of what these projects will do to their communities. They are letting people know how these projects will create more congestion and more pollution and how these sorts of motorways often divide communities—sometimes you cannot even cross the road in your own area anymore.

There you have it—$6.5 billion in total for private tollway projects that are completely lacking in transparency. That is very relevant to this debate. When we are talking about the need for money for roads, we need to look at what the government is doing across the board in this area and to explore why they are being so secretive and who is benefiting from allocations out of the transport budget. The government has committed less than a third of that $6.5 billion to the Roads to Recovery program in the 2014 budget. Roads to Recovery comes in at $2.1 billion—money that we have always said is needed and should be allocated. As other senators have said, however, there need to be standards and we need to get it right.

When it comes to infrastructure and roads spending, this government is full of rhetoric about how it is going to benefit the majority of people, but in reality they are delivering it in a way that works for the big motorway developers. The government accuses the Greens of opposing road safety while at the same time it prioritises billions for the private sector through projects like WestConnex and the east-west tollway. What the Liberals and Nationals need to realise is that people are cottoning on to that. The government might try to slag us off by saying we are not interested in safety and they might sprout those words for their media grabs, but that is insulting. Saying that a person does not dare about the lives and safety of others is, I think, one of the worst things you can say about someone. But I am finding that the community can see through the government's media grabs. They can see that it is just a cheap way for the Liberals and Nationals to try to deflect criticism and divert attention away from the very important analysis the Greens bring to this debate about where the money is being spent and why these urban motorways continue to be pushed by government—when the evidence is in that they represent a failed model. They represent a failed model from the perspective of delivering transport solutions and they are certainly a failed model from the perspective of business success.

If this government were serious about improving productivity and safety, it would take off its blinkers when it comes to infrastructure investment and take public transport seriously. People often say, 'You bang on about public transport, Lee, but seriously people want to get in their cars.' Of course we know that people want to get in their cars. You need trucks. In a country the size of Australia, trucks will always be part of the transport mix. But the key way to reduce congestion on our roads is by having better public transport. That is how we can get traffic on our roads to move more efficiently—by giving more people access to reliable, fast, safe public transport. If they have that access, they will use it. Then the people who need to use our roads will be able to do so with less congestion.

We need good quality safe roads to connect our communities, and that particularly applies—and I will emphasise this again because the continual distortion of the Greens position gets a bit tiresome—in our regional and rural areas. But decades of bias towards roads funding has created bottlenecks in our economy. We are far from world's best practice when it comes to freight and passenger transport. We are back in the 20th century. I was doing some work on the South Coast of New South Wales, along the Princess Highway. It is one of those areas where there have been huge upgrades—in parts, not in all parts. Many of those upgrades have been done for safety reasons, although not just for safety. But there have been huge upgrades with lots of flyovers. In one place, I was able to look down on both the railway line and parts of the motorway. The contrast was extraordinary. You could see a one-line rail track which I doubt has been significantly upgraded in a hundred years—seriously, any upgrades would have been minimal. In stark contrast, you could see this incredibly fancy motorway that has had all the kinks straightened out and is now a very fast road for users. That speaks volumes about how governments—and I am talking about successive governments here, Labor as well as Liberal-National—have approached transport infrastructure.

We need to ensure that rail and bus services keep up with the demand in our cities. I am giving emphasis to the cities because clearly that is where there is considerable congestion, but these services need to be addressed in our regional areas as well. We need to continue to invest in our regional rail network and freight lines to build on the incredible transport legacy created by our forebears. They had vision and they put in the hard work. I often use the extensive rail network that spans our country and I often address community groups who are very passionate about our rail lines.

Sometimes you wonder whether it had been up to the governments of today to come forward with a transport plan they would have had the vision of our forebears to put in such an extensive rail network. Our forebears knew that what they were building then was for the future; it was not just short term, with a couple of rail lines linking up a few communities. They had that vision, and that is what we as a society need to return to today. The planners, the engineers and the public officials who delivered such a comprehensive national rail system had the common sense, vision and understanding of the importance of public transport when it came to connecting our cities with our regions and our regions across this huge land.

The pattern of investment in roads at the expense of rail in recent years has shifted the balance. We now see huge problems across the country, with gaps in the rail network, the dangerous growth of B-double and B-triple trucks on our roads and the ailing public transport system in our major cities. There is not the vision or the coordination needed for safe roads and also for roads that will help boost the productivity of this nation while, at the same time, being a wonderful transport system that allows grandparents to pick up their children in the next suburb after preschool, people to catch public transport to do some volunteer work, students to go to a university a couple of suburbs away and people to get to work efficiently. All this should be fundamental to how a government approaches transport policies, not just one that looks at 'How do we do some favours for some mates?' who happen to be big motorway developers.

The government has refused to spend a dollar on new rail projects. We heard the Prime Minister say those extraordinary words: 'rail is a matter for the states'. How he has really belittled public transport! The proposed legislation makes it clear that land transport is an infrastructure issue that needs to involve all levels of government—federal, state and local. It provides a framework within which the federal government can fund particularly road projects. There is absolutely no reason why such a framework could not be established for important public transport projects. When the minister comes in, he will clearly be dealing with the details of the legislation, but it will also be very relevant to hear from the minister why such a framework—the minister will have the opportunity to set this out—could not be established for important public transport projects. The very name of the bill, 'land transport', would suggest that the funding allocated through this legislation would go beyond roads and perhaps into rail. Unfortunately, we know that is not the case. This is why, when I read the title and then the details of the bill, I felt that it was actually another one of those situations where the title of a bill is being used in such a way as to be misleading.

So, yes, the Greens will support this bill because the Roads to Recovery funding is important to ensure road safety, but it will be contingent on two amendments. My colleague Senator Janet Rice, who has carriage of this legislation, has set this work out very clearly. We believe it is entirely reasonable to hold this government to its election promise, which was:

To ensure more rigorous and transparent assessments of taxpayer-funded projects—

These are the words of the government—and they went on:

we will require all infrastructure projects worth more than $100 million to undergo a cost-benefit analysis.

So what could be the problem here? Surely those amendments should pass. We will support amendments to that effect to ensure the government are held to their word. In fact, we will move for the lower threshold of $50 million to ensure even greater transparency in terms of the allocation of public funding.

Additionally, we will support amendments to enshrine in legislation guidelines relating to the Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Program. However, as we believe this program should be focused on truck driver safety, we will move to prioritise projects that improve the safety environment for heavy vehicles rather than projects that are purely focused on improving the productivity of road freight. The primary goal of government when it comes to road freight infrastructure should be to make sure that truck drivers are safe—this should be the starting point: truck drivers are safe—and then we can have safe roads. You cannot do one without the other, and this is where I become very disturbed with how the government plays out this issue. We are talking about the lives of people—people with families, people who are on the roads with such a huge responsibility driving the big trucks that we regularly pass. They should be able to go home to their families, and everybody they pass should equally always know that the roads are safe.

One of the best ways to ensure that our roads are safe and our productivity is enhanced is by starting the transition to freight on rail. This is not about taking work away from truck drivers; it is about increasing the productivity of our nation. We can all benefit from safe roads, greater productivity and a transport system that works effectively for all.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak in this debate on the Land Transport Infrastructure Amendment Bill 2014. Can I add to Senator Rhiannon's comments that I do not think she will get an answer from the minister—but it is worth holding out for that, in any event. This government does not want to engage in debate. Quite clearly, in this instance, they have been cruel and particularly unfair. They said that they would be an infrastructure government, but they did not tell the Australian people that it would be done on the back of the lowest and middle-income earners, with savage cuts and higher taxes. They did not say that they would do it by re-announcing all of Labor's infrastructure projects.

To be fair to the Treasurer—something he is not used to—he does not think this is an unfair budget. In his mind, poor people do not drive cars anyway. He could take the ice bucket challenge, but I think this challenge would be better. I would like him to stand on the M1, with a billboard that has his photo on it—he could also maybe do this on the M5 in peak hour traffic in Sydney or on the Gateway Motorway or the M1 in Brisbane—and tell those hardworking people that they do not need to worry because they do not drive cars anyway. I would ask him to try that challenge and see how he fares. It might be easier to do the bucket of cold water, and that could wake him up to the fact that he is so wrong about these issues.

The bill amends Labor's Nation Building Program legislation. Labor's Nation Building Program saved the country from the worst of the GFC but, in particular, it did this: it modernised Australia's land transport infrastructure. The government is now determined to tear it up and in its place put only pain and incompetence. This government is really two halves: on one side, they are cruel, mean and heartless, determined to inflict pain on the lowest income earners in the community; on the other side, they are simply incompetent, bumbling around like clowns, a three-ring circus, falling over their own words and tripping themselves up on a budget of broken promises. When you put them together, they make a whole of incompetence and cruel cuts.

Let us look at the incompetence in the budget strategy. First it was a 'budget crisis'. Senator Williams—in this debate—changed the words again; he did not use the words 'budget crisis'. So the government are not clear about what it is. Then it was an emergency. Then it was a problem. But, when 97 per cent of the budget had already passed, they said, 'No problem at all; nothing to see here.' Then, all of a sudden, Mr Barnaby Joyce shot out of the gate and said hospitals and schools would close down if the budget were not passed. Everybody on that side forgot to tell him; again, they forgot to give him the script so that he would get it right! They belatedly wheeled consultants and party hacks into the cabinet room to tell them to tone it down: 'Tone it down. Don't get people excited about your budget crisis,' or your budget emergency or your budget problem, whichever it might be. I am not sure if they got around to discussing it in the party room yesterday. It would have been hard to get a word in, with Senator Macdonald's tirade against Mr Tony Abbott. But I digress, and this is a serious issue. But I wanted to make sure we understood the frame of this debate, where the coalition are at with this debate and, more importantly, how incompetent they are when it comes to reform or following through on reform.

Much of the debate on this bill has centred on the fact that everyone here, I think, believes that we need to continue to improve our roads to have good infrastructure and that that should continue. I think the coalition started out with that premise but lost their way, through being either mean or incompetent—take your pick. The bill relates to roads, rail and intermodal funding by the Commonwealth, and the minister's second reading speech mentioned a dozen major projects that were announced and funded by the previous, federal Labor government. They included the $6.7 billion to upgrade the Bruce Highway—I will say that again: $6.7 billion to upgrade the Bruce Highway—one of the important links across Queensland; $5.6 billion to finish the duplication of the Pacific Highway, which is absolutely necessary; and $1 billion to continue the Gateway Motorway North upgrade in Brisbane. All those projects are about supporting Queensland, Queensland jobs and Queensland infrastructure. In one sense, it is pleasing to see that the coalition did not rip the heart out of that when they got into government; they just re-announced our programs.

What worries me most of all is whether the government will pick up the cost of changing the name of this funding program from the Nation Building Program. The opposition have sought an assurance from Mr Truss that additional Commonwealth expenditure will not be incurred as a result of the name change.

But one of the most difficult issues, and I think Senator Rhiannon picked up on this earlier, is whether, if the government continue with all those funding commitments—including finishing the Gateway WA project in Perth, which I know you, Acting Deputy President Sterle, would be interested in finalising, as well as the $615 million to build the Swan Valley bypass on the Perth to Darwin highway—it is going to be a case of, 'We'll continue this funding but we're going to have to drag money away from somewhere else,' such as the Federal Assistance Grants to local councils and other areas. So is it true that they are going to provide this funding, ultimately?

The government deem it necessary to extend Roads to Recovery. This is, as we know, a very popular program when you go out and talk to local councils; they find it fits their bill. This is a program that Labor funded out to 2018—a total of $1.75 billion fully funded in Labor's budget. The coalition say they support the program. However, if you look at their savage cuts to Financial Assistance Grants in the 2014 budget, the total cut being nearly $1 billion over four years, they appear to have taken with one hand and allowed the remainder to be there. So it is of no comfort to local councils in Queensland. In six years, the indexation freeze on these grants will overwhelm the $350 million allocation made under Roads to Recovery, making support for local government roads a complete mockery. That is where we have ended up with this coalition. 'Tricky and mean' is all you can say about them when it comes to the way they have structured their budget for roads.

On the other hand, if you look at Labor's record—Senator Williams tried to decry what we have done—we doubled the budget to $46.5 billion, upgraded 7,500 kilometres of roads and lifted local government roads grants by 20 per cent. So we have put our bona fides on the table. The local councils out there recognise the hard work that Mr Albanese, from the other place, did as roads minister. They still talk about him reasonably fondly for the work that he did in those regions. He remains committed to assisting local councils to improve their roads and infrastructure.

Let us compare that with the coalition's position. The coalition has committed to the Melbourne East West Link and Sydney's WestConnex projects without cost-benefit analyses in defiance of its own election promises; has shamelessly, as I have said, re-announced Labor's projects, such as the Gateway North in Brisbane and the Bruce and Pacific highway upgrades, claiming they are coalition projects; and has tried to welsh on $500 million on roads spending in WA for the Great Northern Highway and the North West Coastal Highway. They backflipped, and I suspect it was a backflip with half pike. We could give some of the credit for that spending to Senator Sterle, but I think Mr Albanese can take the credit for pushing very hard to secure that backflip with half pike from the coalition. All of this points to the coalition being very tricky and mean when it comes to roads and infrastructure funding.

There are two amendments that we want to make to this bill. I know Senator Sterle has a very deep interest in one, which is the heavy vehicle program. The first amendment seeks to formalise an initiative taken under the former Labor government, a program targeting infrastructure around heavy vehicle driver fatigue and productivity. This program is about ensuring that there are properly funded rest stops along highways to provide more options for drivers to take their break. This highly popular program has funded many initiatives across rural and regional Australia. I ask Senator Williams to support this amendment. If he has an ounce of rural or regional blood in his veins, he will support a program that supports regional truck drivers. I doubt he will, but I will make the bold assertion that he should.

Infrastructure Australia also needs transparency. This government shrouds itself in secrecy. It loves the dark. That is about all you can say about it. It does not want any light on or transparency about what it does. I did not think that I would find a lack of transparency here in road infrastructure. I knew I could find it in the Attorney-General's portfolio and in border command and border protection. They are up-front about it, at least—they simply said, 'I am not going to tell you at all. We will keep it to ourselves. You can go and figure it out yourself.' At least they were up-front about it. At least they told us. I do not agree with their secrecy, I believe that they should have transparency and openness, but in this case who would have thought that you would have secrecy surrounding road infrastructure? But secrecy has found its way in.

Labor wants to ensure that there is full and transparent scrutiny of major project spending. It happened under Labor; why can it not happen under the coalition? They do not want it to. It makes you suspicious instantly, quite frankly. Many stakeholders in the infrastructure debate have called for greater transparency and accountability in how the Commonwealth spends its funds in infrastructure. It makes sense, because people want to have confidence that these billions of dollars being spent on roads are being spent wisely on the areas that require them and in the order that they should be.

Transparency and accountability are anathema to this coalition government. I think they do not like the words. If you were playing word games with them, they would never make those two words no matter how many letters they had to support them. In this instance, this government should take on board this recommendation. This will ensure proper scrutiny before projects are approved. It is about ensuring that we ask the minister to seek the views of the government's expert adviser on infrastructure, Infrastructure Australia. It makes sense. If you are going to spend in this area, why would you not get the expert's evaluation? I think the coalition will not support this amendment, because they love the black. They do not want to have transparency and accountability.

The Land Transport Infrastructure Amendment Bill enables the continuation of the Roads to Recovery program after 30 June 2014. It seeks to unify the scheme for funding national land transport network projects. It also seeks to enlarge the scope of the power to fund research, investigation, studies and analysis. Ultimately, the policy area by the coalition is not new—and I think that is the main point we should note in this debate. They have not come up with any new policy position in this debate. They have done what I said they did when I started—they have simply renamed it and exaggerated the impression of a major shift for the media's consumption. They bang the tambourine drum, as you say, but ultimately it is the same tune. Nothing has changed—except the areas I highlighted where I think they are being tricky and mean, and are seeking to rip funding out from this area. Why they hate local councils so much, I am not sure. In opposition, the coalition would praise local councils. They would talk to them continuously. But now when you travel around rural and regional Australia, local councils are feeling like they have been short-changed by the coalition—I think Senator Williams, particularly, has an affinity with rural Australia. I think the coalition have done themselves a huge disservice in this debate, particularly around roads. When you understand that councils rely significantly on this funding stream to ensure that local communities can be well supported with roads, it really makes you reconsider the coalition's position on this—and appeal to local councils to reconsider their position, which has been to support this program under the now coalition government.

One of the areas I would like to go to briefly is that, whilst Labor was rebuilding the road infrastructure network, we also, through Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements, rebuilt many roads and other infrastructure out in the community. Like Senator Rhiannon, I would also like some assurances from the coalition that, as part of the way forward, they will not also—as they have done with Roads to Recovery and with the federal grants to local councils—short-change local councils on NDRRA spending. We are a country which suffers from floods. We are a country which has cyclones. These events decimate local areas, particularly roads and infrastructure. and they need to be rebuilt; rebuilt quickly and rebuilt well. When Labor was in government, we did just that. I worked with the Attorney-General and I worked with Mr Albanese, to do just that. What I worry about—and the government could put this beyond doubt—is whether the coalition will continue that hard work to make sure that they do not push the cost onto councils like they have done under FAGs. (Time expired)

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Ludwig, your time has expired. From his own seat, Senator Gallacher!

Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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)