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

I rise to speak to the Infrastructure Australia Amendment (Independent Review) Bill 2023. The Greens will be supporting this bill. However, there are improvements that we would like to see made to it, so I foreshadow that I will move some amendments during the committee stage. We support the proposals that the government have put forward to improve scrutiny and planning for infrastructure projects, but there is still more to be done.

I remember when Infrastructure Australia was first set up, in 2008. It was the end of my six years on council, when I was very focused on transport and infrastructure projects. It was during the Rudd government years. Sadly, Infrastructure Australia has never lived up to its claims to be a truly independent, truly transparent and truly evidence-led in its analysis of transport projects, which is what we need in an oversight body like Infrastructure Australia. Infrastructure Australia says that its mission is to 'advise governments, industry and community on the investments and reforms needed to deliver better infrastructure for all Australians'. Critical to doing that is to have a real focus on integrity and a real focus on transparency and to make sure that processes and analysis are evidence led so we can work out where we will get the best value for money with our infrastructure.

We haven't got billions of dollars to just throw around at infrastructure projects that don't stack up. It's important in doing the analysis of what infrastructure projects we should be investing in that the process is transparent, that we make sure that the community know clearly the criteria that projects are being assessed against and that the recommendations being made by our infrastructure body address the outcomes that we want to see in our infrastructure.

What makes better infrastructure is infrastructure that optimises the ecological, social and economic value to address the issues that we currently face. In particular, that means that the infrastructure we establish, that we put our investment into, has to address inequality, climate and the ecological issues that we face. Getting the measures right, getting the governance right, and making sure that the processes that a body like Infrastructure Australia does are completely transparent, completely accountable and, critically, that the decisions and the recommendations are evidence led, is so crucial.

Sadly, this hasn't been the case over the years that I've been here in this Senate. In the last parliament I was a participating member of the Finance and Public Administration References Committee's inquiry when it scrutinised the car park rorts under the last government. They were an incredibly significant bit of infrastructure—but what a disgrace! We had infrastructure planning that was a complete rabble, basically. We saw members of parliament announcing car parks with no consultation or planning. We saw car parks that should never have been built. We saw delays of years and years, as councils were suddenly lumped with announcements that they had no engagement on or capacity to deliver. Most of all, we saw far too little investment in public transport projects, which—the evidence is clear—are the investment we need in our cities to deal with congestion. The whole claim of the car parks, that they were congestion busting, was based on no evidence. There was no evidence whatsoever that that was the case.

We know that we have to have much more investment in public transport. If you do the analysis, if you have evidence led assessment of infrastructure projects, public transport projects that are well planned for appropriate public transport win out every time. They will be what makes a real difference to people's lives. Transport funding is about improving the lives of voters, constituents and community members across the country. It's about shortening commutes through better planning, so that people can get home to their families sooner rather than spending hours waiting for a bus that never arrives or being stuck in the rain at a train station. It's about making our roads safer for cyclists and everyone else. I've heard and I've shared far too many accounts of cyclists killed, sadly. We know that some of those lives could have been saved, some of those deaths prevented—

David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Rice, please resume your seat. Senators, I remind you that the chamber is not the place to be holding private meetings. Senator Pocock and Senator Gallagher, this is not the place for meetings. If you're not participating in the debate, please leave the chamber.

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

Thank you, Acting Deputy President. As I was saying, some of those deaths of cyclists who have been killed on our roads could have been prevented. Some of those lives could have been saved through better planning and infrastructure. Again, if you're making recommendations as to what infrastructure we should be investing in and you have an evidence base, and you have transparent and accountable decisions, then investments in transport infrastructure—investments that make walking and cycling safer and more accessible for more people—stack up every time as being better for people, better for our environment and better for our economy. It matters. Where we invest our money, and what our governance arrangements are for our infrastructure planning, matters. It's much more important than just a set of glossy announcements for MPs and others to make, taking pictures while wearing hard hats and then re-announcing the same project multiple times whenever they need a social media hit or a reason for a travel claim. That's why we need to get it right.

I want to speak particularly about the Melbourne Suburban Rail Loop in that regard. The Greens amendments I will be moving today create a requirement for reviews of projects that might otherwise not have been captured. I've spent far too long at estimates grilling officials over the Liberal Party's election commitments to think that the Labor Party should get a free pass on this issue. There's really concerning reporting that the Melbourne Suburban Rail Loop was cooked up by a team of PwC consultants behind closed doors. That's not appropriate infrastructure planning, and it's important that projects like that are scrutinised. If you're going to be spending tens of billions of dollars on an infrastructure project, that should be captured by our governance and arrangements, which Infrastructure Australia are meant to deliver.

With regard to the Melbourne Suburban Rail Loop, let's be clear. As Greens, we welcome investment in infrastructure, particularly public transport infrastructure, but it needs to be the right investment. A good way to ensure that is to make sure that Infrastructure Australia have to run the ruler over it. So the amendments that I'm going to be moving would ensure Infrastructure Australia undertakes a review of the Melbourne Suburban Rail Loop and that we get clear, independent analysis. Voters deserve nothing less. This should be about good transport policy, not about who has the slickest videos on Facebook. These amendments that I will be moving are consistent with the changes being proposed by the government: redefining Infrastructure Australia's principal purpose, establishing Infrastructure Australia as the Australian government's independent adviser on nationally significant infrastructure, and redefining Infrastructure Australia's functions as: conducting audits or assessments of nationally significant infrastructure to determine adequacy and needs; conducting or endorsing evaluations of infrastructure projects; developing targeted infrastructure lists and plans; and providing advice on nationally significant infrastructure matters.

The first of our amendments will require Infrastructure Australia to evaluate infrastructure projects receiving Commonwealth funding of more than $200 million that would not have already been subject to their evaluation. This would capture the Brisbane arena and the Tasmanian stadium commitments as well as the Melbourne Suburban Rail Loop, among many others. This would mean that we would get some transparency on the government's election commitments. We're in the middle of our cost-of-living crisis. As I said, we haven't got billions of dollars to throw around. Already this morning I have given a speech about the government's choices to not invest to lift people out of poverty. So where the money gets spent is important, and people need and deserve to have greater scrutiny over government spending, particularly big, splashy infrastructure projects. It's only fair that Labor's pre-election announcements such as the Melbourne Suburban Rail Loop are reviewed by Infrastructure Australia.

The other amendment I'm going to be moving would prevent those who are current and past directors of fossil fuel companies from taking up roles as commissioners of Infrastructure Australia. As my colleague Ms Watson-Brown noted in the House of Representatives, we have seen far too many of those people who have spent years worsening the climate crisis taking up roles in Infrastructure Australia. As I said, if you think about what the criteria should be for where our billions of dollars are going on infrastructure projects, there are a range of criteria that they should meet, and doing things that are going to help us tackle the climate crisis and certainly aren't going to make it worse is a really important criterion to be up there as one of the things that Infrastructure Australia should be doing. So it's important we have people at the helm who have that commitment to reduce our carbon pollution and actually tackle the climate crisis, not people who have spent, in some cases, decades of their lives leading projects that are making the climate crisis worse. Infrastructure Australia is too important a body, and our response to the climate crisis is too important, to let fossil fuel company executives determine the response from inside this building.

Over the past decade, we've witnessed multiple key people on the board of Infrastructure Australia who have had or currently have senior roles in big fossil fuel corporations. One example of this that Ms Watson-Brown brought to the House of Representatives' attention is Samantha Hogg, who was a member of the Infrastructure Australia board between March 2019 and November 2021 and had previously held several director positions with BHP Billiton. Another example is John Ellice-Flint, who was on the board of IA from 2014 to 2019. He's had approximately 20 former roles in fossil fuel companies, including Bonaparte Gas & Oil and Santos, and he held some of those roles while being on the boards. He currently is a director and the secretary of Smart Gas Pty Ltd. There are countless other examples of board members of Infrastructure Australia who have former or current involvement in a huge coal, gas and oil corporations. These people have brought enormous bias and potentially an enormous conflict of interest when advising on Australia's infrastructure projects if you believe, as we as Greens certainly do, that our infrastructure projects should be tackling the climate crisis, not making it worse.

No-one advising the government should stand to benefit from particular infrastructure being built, especially not fossil fuel companies. We need sustainable infrastructure that benefits everyday people, and to have this we need people advising the government who put the interests of the Australian community first, not those of dirty coal and gas corporations. So the Greens' amendments to the bill seek to keep fossil fuel companies out of infrastructure, to increase transparency and to put infrastructure that benefits our communities at its centre.

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

I rise to speak to the Infrastructure Australia Amendment (Independent Review) Bill 2023. This bill seeks to amend the Infrastructure Australia Act to implement a number of recommendations from the independent review into Infrastructure Australia undertaken in 2022, which was a Labor election commitment. Labor did commit to a review of Infrastructure Australia because, under the former government, the organisation suffered from a series of political board appointments and a lack of direction. I think it's important for people to hear this. We know about it in here but the more Australians to hear about it, the better.

Major recommendations from the review that this bill will implement are: introducing a new object to the Infrastructure Australia Act 2008 that identifies IA's mandate as the Commonwealth government's independent advisor on nationally significant infrastructure investment planning and project prioritisation; and reforming IA's functions and product suite to be more focused, including developing a smaller, more targeted, infrastructure priority list that prioritises nationally significant infrastructure proposals for consideration by the Australian government.

The bill will help to reduce duplication with the states and territories by requiring IA to develop a nationally consistent framework for evaluating infrastructure proposals enabling IA to endorse project evaluations conducted by state and territory governments. The bill also makes changes to the governance arrangements of IA. Instead of a board, which we saw with the previous government, IA will be governed by three commissioners, including a chief commissioner and a chief executive officer, the CEO.

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Three?

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

Yes, three—for you, Senator Scarr. The commissioners will be the accountable authority and will be appointed by the relevant minister based on their expertise, skills, experience, knowledge, gender and geographical representation. The bill will ensure that IA is empowered to carry out its role as an independent and expert advisor to the Australian government on nationally significant infrastructure needs and priorities including investment in transport, water, communications and energy. It will refocus IA to provide important and strategic advice to the Australian government. The new governance model will ensure IA has the eminence, authority and standing to be a national leader and coordinator among infrastructure advisory bodies.

Now let's go back a government or two. Previous minister Mr Barnaby Joyce stacked the board of Infrastructure Australia. The chair at the time described himself as 'a fairly solid Barnaby supporter'. Another board member was a former Brisbane City councillor and a vice president of the Queensland LNP.

An opposition senator: Outstanding individual!

Am I touching a nerve over there? A third appointment was an LNP candidate at the 2011 and 2015 Queensland state elections—don't hear much—and a fourth appointment was a former Liberal branch president.

When Infrastructure Australia was established by the now Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, it was created—and I remember because I was here—as an apolitical, expert board. Infrastructure Australia was created to take the politics out of major projects and create a clear guide to what government and industry need to invest in and when those investments should be made. The former Labor government listened to Infrastructure Australia and invested in every one of its priority projects. All of this changed under the Liberal and National parties. They destroyed Infrastructure Australia as a major economic body and, instead, used it as a vehicle to give jobs to their mates, the red wine club. They ignored Infrastructure Australia's priority list and, instead, invested in imaginary car parks rather than major projects that would lay the foundation for our nation's future economic growth.

One has only to look at the Inland Rail project to see how bad the Liberals and Nationals were at managing the infrastructure portfolio. The Liberals and Nationals left Inland Rail in a mess. After a decade in office—10 years—they let the cost blow out—are you ready for this? I know because I was chairing the committee looking into this mess. They let the cost blow out from $4.7 billion to over $31 billion. They left it behind schedule and had no plan for where it would start or finish.

Let me share this with those that are listening too. It was at one of the inquiries I was having into it, and I was ably backed up by Senator Susan McDonald over there, from the Nats in Queensland. It was an absolute shock when we asked the simple question. I asked the ARTC: 'You're talking about 1.2-kilometre-long trains coming into Brisbane every hour or so with hundreds and hundreds of containers, one after another, to unload in Brisbane. Where in Brisbane?' I'm from Perth; I'm not from Brisbane, but I trucked from Perth to Brisbane on a number of occasions. The ARTC said Acacia Ridge. My backside nearly fell out. To those who aren't Brisbanites or Queenslanders: Acacia Ridge is right in the heart of suburban Brisbane. My depot when I was with Ansett, where I used to run into, was in Acacia Ridge. It was hard enough getting a single semitrailer through Acacia Ridge in the eighties, let alone the thousands of containers that are going to be coming in over a 24-hour period. I still remember the fear of getting caught at Coopers Plains with the railway light on and off all the time, pulling up the traffic and the trucks. This was the stupidity of it.

There was another shock to us from this mob over here, who were running around the nation, espousing the Inland Rail. Don't get me wrong. We need Inland Rail. We need to build an inland rail to move freight efficiently through this nation and we need to move people through this nation efficiently. We can't continue to do it on trucks. We're getting too much transport task. I said to the Australian Rail Track Corporation, 'Where in Melbourne is this train going to leave from?' They had no idea. They thought it might be somewhere in the trucking and rail area in Truganina—I'm talking Suburban Melbourne—or it might be another one I can't think of the name of. It was about an hour's drive out of Melbourne. I said, 'How does this other place out of Melbourne sound?' They said, 'Well, currently we'd probably have to double the amount of trucks on the roads to run the freight out to wherever else they think it's going to go.' What a complete and utter shambles.

The Liberals and the Nationals even ignored a request from the chair of the ARTC to ensure its board directors had appropriate skills and experience. How dare we want to have people with skills and experience! Why would we want to do that? Infrastructure Australia didn't have it, so why would the ARTC get it? They left it to the Albanese government to rescue the project.

The Albanese Labor government commissioned an independent review of the delivery of the project to gain a clear understanding of all its problems and a way forward. The government has accepted all of Dr Schott's review recommendations in full or in principle. We are staging the remainder of Inland Rail, firstly prioritising delivery of the section from Beveridge, down in Melbourne, to Parkes, in New South Wales. Beveridge is the other place I was thinking of. The government also supported Dr Schott's recommendation to establish a subsidiary company of ARTC to deliver the Inland Rail.

When it comes to mismanagement, I've touched on and could keep going all day on infrastructure spending, but let's look a little bit closer at the Urban Congestion Fund, as it was called, including the infamous Commuter Car Park Fund, up there with the worst of the worst. This was the $4.8 billion program that allocated 83 per cent of its funding to—you ready for it—Liberal-held seats. It was meant to target 'pinch points' and congestion in cities across this great country, but 136 of the announced projects were in Liberal-held areas. Only 26 projects went to seats held by Labor. If we look at these figures, it would seem that Australia's most congested roads were located almost entirely in Liberal-held seats!

Where Australians live or who Australians vote for does not matter: they deserve their fair share of infrastructure investment and they all deserve the jobs, productivity and liveability improvements that come with it. The Urban Congestion Fund was nothing more than a mammoth slush fund, ready to be pulled out at election time to buttress the campaigns of Liberal MPs. That isn't what infrastructure is meant for; infrastructure is meant to deliver a better life to all Australians. That's why our government has been working so hard to strip the waste and rorts out of the Infrastructure Investment Program. The previous government rorted the infrastructure investment pipeline, and Australians won't forget it.

I'll also say this: it was easy to run around in the 10th year of the decaying, toxic Morrison government, which was the environment we had here in Australia, and to think, 'Let's just go out and announce in every electorate in Australia—every seat in Australia—that we're going to spend billions of dollars on all of these fantasy projects if you just vote for us.' But do you know what? I think most Australians got this: you actually have to have a budget. Yes, you have to have a bit of dough in the bank and you actually have to have some good business cases. Every time my very dear friend and colleague Senator Scarr speaks he reminds me of economics 101. I do listen to that, and this is basic economics 101: you can't spend more than what you've got. Or, at least, you have to have a damn good plan or PPPs to start paying it off.

I just had to say that! I was brought up in working-class Langford in Perth's eastern suburbs. I learned very early in my life that you can only spend what you've got, boy, and if you want to spend more then put your boots on, get out there and work harder. Work more hours, work on weekends and don't whinge to your mother! Let's just say it as it is! And I'm so glad that I was brought up that way.

The Australian government has committed to a $120 billion land transport infrastructure pipeline. That's no mean feat: $120 billion. This 10-year investment pipeline is delivering nationally significant nation-shaping projects. Our investment is building projects that will have a lasting benefit for Australia, will enhance our economic and social productivity, and will support our prosperity. We have prioritised projects which will benefit all Australians generally. They're economically sustainable and are resilient to climate change. And the Australian government is working in genuine partnership with state and territory governments to plan, fund and deliver the highest-priority infrastructure projects across the nation. For communities, these investments mean shorter and safer travel, and more liveable cities, suburbs and regions.

As a government, we're committed to ensuring that freight keeps moving, that people can get home from work safely and that the connections between our cities and our regions are strong. Our investment is delivering critical nation-shaping projects all across the country. This includes projects that are building regional Australia by supporting regional communities and businesses. In the 2023-24 budget, the government committed more than $25 billion to 425 major transport infrastructure projects in regional Australia, with a further 49 that will benefit both regional and urban communities. Working with every state and territory, the focus of the Infrastructure Investment Program is to improve road safety, to better connect our regions, to bust congestion and to meet our national freight challenge. And, may I say, we're told that the freight challenge is going to double every 15 years—and it does.

The government is continuing to partner with state and territory governments to roll out life-saving road safety treatments under the Road Safety Program—something dear to my heart—with the delivery of total nationwide funding of $2.96 billion continuing through to mid-2025. We're also delivering $4.4 billion over 10 years for the Roads of Strategic Importance initiative, supporting more efficient supply chains and helping connect regional businesses to local and international markets. The government is spending $1.5 billion on the National Freight Highway Upgrade Program to seal the Tanami Road in that magnificent state of Western Australia through to the Northern Territory, as well as upgrading our nationally significant freight routes, including the Dukes, Stewart and Augusta highways in South Australia, and the Central Arnhem Road in the Northern Territory. The Tanami and Central Arnhem roads' share of this $1.5 billion investment is $740 million.

I could continue with announcement after announcement of great initiatives, but time is against me, so I commend this bill to the Senate. (Time expired)

Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to follow on from my Western Australian colleague, who I know has very long experience of advocating for infrastructure for his state but also with being a part of the Rural and Regional Affairs committee, which has looked at many of these infrastructure projects over many years and has a long experience particularly with Inland Rail and the woes of that project over the last couple of years that we saw under the previous government.

When it comes to delivering infrastructure that Australians need and that communities want, we are listening to Australians. With the Infrastructure Australia Amendment (Independent Review) Bill 2023 we are ensuring that the days off rorts and money for mates are over. We are making sure that, when it comes to infrastructure, we return independence and merit based decision-making to delivering what Australians need.

This bill seeks to amend the Infrastructure Australia Act, and it's really important to talk to Australians about why we're taking these important steps. We want to make sure that a number of recommendations of the Independent Review into Infrastructure Australia, which was undertaken in 2022 and was something that we took to the election and committed to, are delivered. We committed to that review because under the former government Infrastructure Australia had suffered from a series of political appointments to the board —I think it's fair to say—and it wasn't being listened to when it came to what the future plan was for infrastructure across the country. We expect senators to come into this place and advocate for their state and members of the House of Representatives to advocate for their local communities. That is perfectly reasonable, and it's something I think all Queenslanders expect me to do when I come here. But we do need a national approach, a national plan and an independent assessment which delivers infrastructure to the places that need it the most, to the infrastructure projects that will deliver the most benefit to Australians, and we need to make sure those decisions are made in an independent way. That's why we wanted to review Infrastructure Australia, and that's what this bill is all about today.

The major recommendations from the review that this bill will implement include, as my colleagues have mentioned, introducing a new object to the Infrastructure Australia Act that identifies Infrastructure Australia's mandate as the Commonwealth government's independent adviser on nationally significant infrastructure planning and project prioritisation. We're also reforming the functions of Infrastructure Australia to be more focused, including developing a smaller and more targeted infrastructure priority list that prioritises nationally significant infrastructure proposals, as I said before, for consideration by Australian governments. This is really important because sometimes infrastructure goes across state lines, and we need to make sure that we are investing in the infrastructure that our nation needs, even if it crosses from one state into another, and sometimes across three states.

The bill will also help to reduce duplication with states and territories by requiring Infrastructure Australia to develop a nationally consistent framework for evaluating infrastructure proposals and by enabling Infrastructure Australia to endorse project evaluations conducted by states and territories. This is the part of the bill that I think is really crucial for productivity and development, creating jobs and getting infrastructure built in our country, because what we saw under the former government was a real reluctance to work with states and territories when it came to investing in infrastructure. In fact, when it came to infrastructure in Queensland, it was combative and driven by a desire from the former government to create conflict rather than build roads. What we saw was that projects that were favoured by Queenslanders and Queensland communities were overlooked by the former government. What we saw—and Cross River Rail is a really good example of this—was that something that was desperately needed by Queenslanders missed out time and time again on funding from the infrastructure portfolio of the previous government, just because they had some ideological difference with the Queensland government about how important it was. The Queensland government had to go it alone, had to find the funds to invest in that important project, and they're delivering Cross River Rail now.

What's really key is that when we work together with states and territories, as our government has sought to do, whether that's with a Liberal or Labor premier—it doesn't matter to us what state is represented by what party—we work together closely. We want to work really closely in particular with the Queensland government to deliver infrastructure priorities that Queenslanders need.

We're also making changes to governance arrangements, which can be best described as making sure that the board is fit for purpose and accountable. That's a really simple concept that eluded the previous government: making sure that the Infrastructure Australia board could actually make decisions and have the right expertise, skills, knowledge and geographical representation to make really good decisions. That's what we would expect, just as people in Queensland would expect their views to be represented and would expect the right people with the right skills to be on the board.

We're also making sure that the bill will empower Infrastructure Australia to carry out its role as an independent and expert adviser to the Australian government on nationally significant infrastructure needs, including in transport; in water, which we know is important; in communications, which are ever increasingly important in this period of our lives, when we spend a lot of time in front of screens and when a lot of services are delivered by digital communications; and in energy, delivering projects that deliver energy to our grid. We are seeking to do these things by introducing a new governance model to ensure that Infrastructure Australia has the eminence, authority and standing to be a national leader and coordinator among infrastructure advisory bodies.

We're taking these really important steps because we know how important it is to get this right. For a decade under the previous government we saw the stacking of the board of Infrastructure Australia, particularly by former minister Joyce when he was the minister for infrastructure. A board member of Infrastructure Australia at the time was a former Brisbane City councillor and vice-president of the Queensland Liberal National Party, yet they still couldn't agree to fund projects in Queensland. A third appointment to that board was an LNP candidate at the 2011 and 2015 Queensland state elections. They were pretty close mates with the minister at the time. It's really disappointing that we got to a point where not even the board of Infrastructure Australia—something so important for our country to get right—was safe from the former government's jobs for mates.

What is also incredibly disappointing for all Australians is that Infrastructure Australia was established with a board that was apolitical and expert but over time that was degraded and eroded. We saw the former government ignore infrastructure priority lists and instead invest in rort programs. 'Car park rorts' was one, as my colleague Senator Sterle was speaking about a moment ago. They also made announcements for projects but never actually provided the funding, or the funding was in the budget but there was no agreement with the state or territory government to deliver that project, so there was no pipeline for the project. That happened quite often in Queensland.

What was really disappointing was you would see a press release, a big announcement, about big spending on a road and then you would never hear about the project again because it wouldn't get built under the former government. We are really seeking to move away from this type of policy-making. We want to make sure that we can't have another car park rorts. Australians said to us at the election that they didn't want to see another car park rorts, another regional jobs investment program, or ARJIP, as we have heard it referred to, where a bunch of people get together and decide to give money to organisations or companies that they have associations with; that is not what we want to see.

What I am really proud of is that in the short time since we have come to government we are investing in Queensland infrastructure, particularly in infrastructure in Far North Queensland. The projects we have identified and we are investing in provide a shared community benefit, not just to one group of people or to someone who is a friend of the minister. What we're seeking to do is identify projects that have long-term, job-creating benefits to community, and there is no better example of that than the Cairns common user facility, a $300 million project that is going to invest in marine manufacturing in Cairns. I know many people have had the opportunity to visit the shipyards there. I'm proud of the work we have done to put the project on the map. That is the type of project we want to see independently assessed and supported because we know that a common user facility would actually provide the benefit to the community, not just in the short-term but for the long-term, to provide strong, secure, local manufacturing jobs. That is a project not supported by the former government. It is a project that would never be built if it wasn't for a Labor government. That $300 million and the thousands of manufacturing jobs wouldn't have happened if it weren't for a Labor government.

We are also funding Cairns water security with $105 million from the federal government, another project that, when it is built, will continue to deliver for many years to come. Something I'm really proud of is that we are investing $45 million in infrastructure in the Torres Strait because—I think it is safe to say—for decades this part of the world, being represented by the Liberal National Party in this place, refused to provide any funding to fix a single jetty or to fix any of the infrastructure needed to get really important supplies through to people living in the most remote parts of our country. In the Torres Strait, schoolchildren had to wade through crocodile-infested waters to get to the boat to take them to school—that is, from Prince of Wales Island to Thursday Island. I mean, that has been the state of play for decades yet nothing had ever come across the desk of the Liberal National Party that would make them want to fund it, so we are funding that project in conjunction with the state government because we know when we work together with state governments that we can deliver good infrastructure that not only creates jobs when it is being built but can also deliver long-term benefits to the community.

Finally, the last project I want to mention is the Captain Cook Highway in Far North Queensland because this is an upgrade of a really important road. It is the road I use to drive to get to work every single day when I am home in Far North Queensland. In 2019, the member for Leichhardt, a member of the former government, announced they would bust conjunction on the Captain Cook Highway. Under the former government, not a single piece of dirt was moved. Nothing was built under the former government. But under the Labor government getting to work, sitting down and working with the Queensland government, we are finally delivering upgrades to the Captain Cook Highway and to Smithfield. It will link up to the Smithfield bypass. Finally, all of those people that were promised this years ago and saw nothing happen under the former government will finally see this infrastructure delivered. That's the difference when you get down and you work with people, and you make sure that you are working with states and territories, providing independent infrastructure that communities need. That's what this bill is about and I commend the bill to the Senate.

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm glad to speak to the Infrastructure Amendment (Independent Review) Bill 2023 today because it is an absolute disgrace that we are trying to downgrade the importance of infrastructure in this country. All good governments know that you should be building infrastructure, and yet on that side of the chamber we've got a Labor government under Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister of Australia, that doesn't want to prioritise building infrastructure. That's what we have come to expect from these people who would rather tear the building and the infrastructure in this country down than build it up. That's the modus operandi of our Marxists across the chamber here—it's always 'tear everything down'. If they're not tearing down our institutions and our customs and our values, they want to tear down the infrastructure and let it rot it away.

While they're doing this, they are overcharging. They're pumping up immigration—we have 400,000 people coming in this year, and half of them are going to university, so they are not adding to the actual supply side of labour. Even Ben Chifley knew, when he brought in immigrants and he built the Snowy Hydro scheme back after World War II—we don't have that here anymore. The big problem is not just the fact that students spend four years here consuming goods and services and adding to the demand side of the economy but also that university don't pay taxes. We have extra demand on our infrastructure but the universities who are milking the system aren't paying any tax on these students coming in.

Labor have got their priorities all wrong. Rather than building dodgy renewables that are unreliable and expensive and driving up the cost of energy, which is driving whatever manufacturing was left after the 1985 button plan—which destroyed manufacturing—offshore, they now want to de-prioritise Infrastructure Australia. I have to say I am shocked that some of the speeches on the other side of the chamber have been mocking what the former coalition government had scheduled to get built. I'll just outline what Labor have cut from their funding pipeline in their first budget when they got into government last year.

They are pulling $7 billion out of the following projects—and these matter: the Hells Gate dam, the Dungowan dam and the Emu Swamp dam. With the Emu Swamp dam, the amount of effort that is taken to build what is not a large dam and was never an expensive dam—all the farmers in Warwick and the good people of Warwick, in the Southern Downs at the headwaters of the mighty Condamine River, was a dam for their community and a reliable source of water. Let's not forget that this funding is because the state Labor government, under Annastacia Palaszczuk, the Queensland Premier, has not been funding infrastructure. It's not like when I was a boy and you would wake up every morning and there'd be a new dam built somewhere, like the Burdekin and the Wivenhoe, and you'd have new infrastructure like the Captain Cook Bridge and the freeway running through Brisbane. We haven't got any of that. If we didn't have the Palaszczuk government trying to stop the construction of dams—and who can remember the disaster with Rookwood Weir dam in Rockhampton? The federal government had to fund all of that as well because the Labor Premier at the time, Annastacia Palaszczuk, wouldn't build any infrastructure in the regions. This matters, because when you build infrastructure you start to generate recurring revenue.

As a young man growing up in Chinchilla, I got the benefits of that because our premier at the time, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, opened up those coalmines and the Weipa bauxite deposits. We had recurring revenue coming from the trainlines. We had recurring revenue coming from the royalties from the coal and the bauxite. We had recurring revenue coming from the ports—merge charges and things like that. We had all those jobs and all the associated jobs. What that recurring revenue did was pay for recurring costs in schools and hospitals. That's why when I grew up my town of Chinchilla had a maternity ward, but we don't have that anymore. This is the importance of infrastructure: infrastructure builds a nation.

It's about time that the state Labor premiers and the federal Labor government worked together. We've heard the people on the other side blame the federal government. It's not the role of the federal government to be building dams and suchlike infrastructure. That's actually the role of the state government. The last federal coalition government actually went into bat for these incompetent state premiers who are more interested in spreading fear and loathing about climate change, COVID and whatever else they seek to control people's minds with than actually seeking to fund this stuff. What happens when Labor come into power? They cut funding.

I'll continue with these dams. The Hughenden irrigation scheme has been deferred. Hughenden is in North Queensland, just west of the Great Dividing Range west of Cairns. You have black soil there in an area larger than the size of Tasmania. All you have to do is add water. If you want to talk about renewable energy, I'll tell you what renewable energy is. It's the stuff that comes out of the sky—it's the rain and the sunlight. If you mix that with the beautiful black soil around Hughenden and add toil, as the words of our national anthem say, you will create wealth. With that wealth you'll get an increase in land values, an increase in land taxes, an increase in company taxes and an increase in payroll taxes. All of that wealth creation starts to generate recurring taxes for the state governments that then pay for the schools and hospitals. That's how we manage to make ends meet in this country. It is wealth for toil. If you don't build the infrastructure that produces the goods and services, our country cannot move forward.

I just want to touch on another couple of things. They were talking about the car park rorts that occurred under the coalition government. Nothing could be further from the truth there. Those car parks actually mattered a lot. I'm going to call out the hypocrisy of the other side here. The member for Lilley, where my electorate office sits, actually came out in the 2019 federal campaign and announced funding for car parks—announced $7 million for Northgate and announced $4 million for Geebung. Park and ride is a great idea. If we can encourage people to drive to their closest train station so that they catch the train to work rather than cause congestion in the middle of the city, isn't that a good thing? Isn't that a much smarter way of protecting our environment and keeping our atmosphere clean and green and keeping out of the atmosphere carbon monoxide—not dioxide—nitrogen, sulphide and all the stuff that comes out of the car exhaust? Isn't that a much smarter idea?

This is the catastrophising by the other side. They are so good at doing this. Let's not forget that these guys weaponised the rape allegation and they weaponised those car parks. They somehow turned those into a rort when we needed people to be able to park and ride. Bill Shorten, the member for Maribyrnong, was the opposition leader during the 2019 federal election. He was out with the former member for Lilley, Wayne Swan, and Anika Wells actually announcing these park and rides. So the hypocrisy from the other side of the chamber is absolutely breathtaking.

Now I want to talk about my good friend Llew O'Brien, the member for Wide Bay, and all the effort he put in to getting the highway north of Gympie to be built as a dual-lane highway. I don't need to tell you the importance of safety on our roads. I went to my primary school's centenary a couple of weeks ago. It was good to go back. I was looking through the scrapbooks from the years when I was there. An eight-year-old boy was killed in a car accident. It was one of Chinchilla's worst car accidents. His mother; his younger brother, who was five; his mother's friend; and two people from Bulimba had an accident at Chinchilla golf course. I must admit that that shocked me a lot. It still shocks me because the Friday before the Saturday he was killed I spent detention with him. I know more than anyone that every year I went to school someone from my home town was killed on our highways.

We need to spend money on our roads. I know that the federal government only does the federal highways, but the Bruce Highway—I grew up on the Warrego Highway—needs spending. My good friend Llew O'Brien, the member for Wide Bay, fought tooth and nail to make sure that that road infrastructure north of Gympie wasn't going to be built. That's because the transport minister of Queensland, Mark Bailey, would only fund a one-lane highway north of Gympie. The Wide Bay area in Queensland is one of the fastest growing regions in Australia, and yet we had a state Labor government that would not actually put the money in to build a dual-lane highway. Given the royalties and all of the production that comes out of Bundaberg—which is an extremely productive area, with fruit and things like that as well as tourism, and which has enormous population grown—if you were going to upgrade the road, why on earth would you only do it as a single lane?

Of course, they did it as a single lane because the Queensland government are broke, and they are broke because they sold all the infrastructure. Former Queensland premiers Peter Beattie and Anna Bligh sold all of the Queensland infrastructure when they were in government. They sold the Port of Brisbane for a measly six times its earnings. Why would you sell a monopoly for six times its earnings? They sold the Queensland forestry plantations, which contained a reasonable amount of freehold, for five times their earnings. They sold ports. The very things that the great Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen built in his time as Premier—the various ports, Abbot Point and stuff like that—were all sold by Queensland Labor.

This is the thing about the Labor government: they hate to build things. Their modus operandi is to tear things down. They love to use fearmongering. They love to tear down our cultures. This is the great culture of Australia. When I do my stump speech and go around to various communities, I often talk about what a great country Australia is because of the pioneering spirit of those who came to this country. They built things. If you got washed up on a desert island, would you either (a) go and hold a meeting where you'd come up with ideas to scare our children witless or (b) say, 'We're going to start building things'? That's the difference between this side of the chamber and that side of the chamber: we believe in construction, because with construction comes productivity and with productivity comes wealth.

Do you want to know why we've got a productivity crisis in this country, Madam Acting Deputy President? It's because of that side of the chamber. Don't forget that it was that side of the chamber that in 1985 decided to rationalise manufacturing under the Button plan. Well, you did a great job of that. You rationalised manufacturing offshore. Congratulations! And what did they replace it with? In 1990, John Dawkins, the former education minister, came up with the great idea that we would send all of our children to university. That was a fantastic idea! It meant that, before they'd even started a job, they came out of university brainwashed and broke. They got some degree that told them how to shuffle paper in a superannuation fund.

After the great Dawkins plan, we then had Paul Keating come up with the great idea of taking 12 per cent of workers' wages, like the wages of all those workers in regional Queensland. They said: 'We're going to take 12 per cent of your income and give it to someone you've never met in one of the ivory palaces of Sydney and Melbourne, and you're not going to get it back till you're 67.' That's if you get it back at all—if they haven't gambled it away. They're now looking at investing in cryptocurrency, heaven forbid. What next—a market for fairies and unicorns?

We talk about why we've got a productivity crisis in this country. We need to go back to producing goods and services, not buying and selling, playing games with cryptocurrency and the stock market or shuffling money through superannuation funds. We need to build! We know that superannuation costs us $30 billion a year because we've got a whole bunch of financial engineers shuffling paper and gambling with other people's money.

Then we've got the education sector. As I've pointed out before, they now import students. They don't pay taxes on those students. The battlers out there getting out of bed every day and putting their noses to the grindstone have to pay more taxes for the infrastructure that isn't being built. The only infrastructure that's being built at the moment is for renewable energy that keeps on falling over or driving up energy prices, which is only going to send more manufacturing offshore. That matters because, if you want to mix concrete to build the roads or make steel, it's too expensive to make it here, so we have to import it from overseas. We need to build.

I'll finish this off by saying that we need an infrastructure bank. We should not go offshore and borrow another country's currency to fund the construction of infrastructure. I've talked about this before. The sovereign seven are power stations, dams, roads, rail, ports, airports and telecommunications. They are sovereign wealth if you build that asset—debit, asset, credit, equity. We are a sovereign country. We have title over that untapped wealth that those assets will create. We do not need to swap title for a mortgage because they're too silly to borrow money from a privately owned federal reserve. I'll leave it at that.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I speak to the Infrastructure Australia Amendment (Independent Review) Bill 2023—supposedly independent! This bill proposes to review any previous government infrastructure project that has not yet had spades in the ground, to stop previous government commitments. This bill guts the Infrastructure Australia board, reducing the number from 12 people who know about infrastructure and business to three people for whom there is no requirement to know anything about infrastructure—nothing. I expect the government to appoint three bureaucrats who appreciate that advancement in the Public Service is based on giving the government whatever it wants to hear. To call that an impartial board is a joke.

This bill requires Infrastructure Australia to take account of government policy. Where there is expertise, it will no doubt be in solar, wind and battery backup, because this is the point of the bill: more taxpayers' money sacrificed on a pointless quest to save the world from cyclical, natural climate variation—natural warming and cooling cycles. This bill will facilitate the destruction of native Australian forests and replace them with industrial wind and solar landscapes. These are parasitic misinvestments forcing up energy prices and, as a result of energy scarcity, destroying employment in small and medium businesses and contributing to a massive transfer of wealth from everyday Australians to billionaire climate carpetbaggers.

An amendment from Senator David Pocock will force this exact outcome. The bill ensures every project must have a sponsor, meaning Infrastructure Australia can't advance its own projects. Good ideas aren't always commercial or may be so large that a project sponsor risks bankruptcy to do the homework to advance the project to the funding stage. In this case, Infrastructure Australia should be allowed to step in and develop an initial business case with the expectation that, should the project proceed, their investment would be recouped using private Australian capital. It's fair to say that the Future Fund needs to contribute much more towards growing our national infrastructure. Snowy 2.0 is a salutary warning about what happens when the government takes a project through to the decision stage first and does the maths later and then rubs out the maths. The process behind Snowy 2.0 should never happen again, and both sides of parliament have been culpable.

The bill requires Infrastructure Australia to take account of government policy. It's interesting to note some excellent amendments moved in the other place, the House of Representatives, designed to put commercial expertise into the bill while excluding conflicts of interest. Those amendments all failed. I have circulated a committee-stage amendment that Independent MP Dai Le originally moved to require the disclosure of conflicts of interest. Why wouldn't anyone want that? How can a government do a bill like this, which may spend $100 billion over 10 years, and not be worried about conflicts of interest? I've spoken in the last few days about the negative influence of foreign investment funds on government policy. I can see nothing in this bill that would stop these predatory billionaire funds using this bill for their own interests.

Other amendments that were not and still would not be supported are as follows. The first is an amendment to introduce a cost-benefit analysis for any project over $100 million. Apparently, the government doesn't want cost-benefit analysis on investment projects, no doubt because there isn't a solar, wind or big battery project in the country that would pass the cost-benefit analysis—not one. David Littleproud MP asked for one of the commissioners to have substantial experience in rural and regional Australia. The Albanese government stopped that amendment from passing. The same happened to amendments improving transparency and reporting to parliament. They don't want transparency and reporting to parliament. I know every opposition will talk about transparency before they get elected and then, upon election, make transparency worse, which is exactly what this government is doing. The Albanese government seems worse than most at breaking their election promises and killing transparency.

Senator Rice proposed an amendment to make infrastructure more social since we are all going to be stuck in our 15-minute cities—or 'prisons' to use a more accurate term. Not if One Nation can help it! I do thank Senator Rice for her amendment around continuity of existing projects. In this regard, the legislation is poorly worded. It's true that some of the Infrastructure Australia projects which hold so much promise are lagging. Many Queensland projects, like the Urannah dam, have not advanced since April 2022. There's no doubt that this is to prepare these projects for abolition. And rather than Minister King being blamed, the independent Infrastructure Australia will be blamed for implementing government policy—as this bill requires.

Infrastructure minister King has terminated the Hells Gates dam north of Charters Towers and the Saego dam at Hughenden. This is yet another clear indication of the Albanese government hollowing out the bush and delivering our best farmland to foreign multinational superannuation funds and merchant banks for the benefit of foreign interests and to the exclusion of everyday Australians. Minister Plibersek's water policy changes introduced this week prove just how much this government hates the bush. The proposed measures will destroy rural communities. Country towns have a critical mass for population and services, below which a town is not viable. This government will wipe many Australian towns off the map and return that land to Gaia. The major banks know this already and they're acting like rats leaving a sinking ship with their branch closures. In effect, this Labor government is hollowing out the bush and using that money to line the pockets of climate carpetbaggers in order to buy votes off the Teals and the Greens—city votes.

The east-west railway and multifunction corridor with associated steel parks have been progressed to the next stage at Infrastructure Australia following One Nation initiating a Senate inquiry. I look forward to the new board continuing those projects. Real infrastructure—dams, railroads, baseload power stations and ports—will never be built outside the capital cities because the government wants to hollow out the bush. It is hollowing out the bush. That's why real infrastructure will not be built outside the capital cities. The only infrastructure the bush will get is unwanted infrastructure: wind turbines, solar panels and a spider's web of high-voltage power lines growing like a cancer across rural Australia. And, like a cancer, these infernal things kill productive farmland, destroy native forest and destroy the native fauna that used to live there. They're killing pristine creeks. No-one in the bush wants these kamikaze, parasitic misinvestments.

There's support from city folks who are eager to feel like worthy climate warriors while driving their petrol cars and living in freestanding houses, taking overseas holidays and dialling their air-conditioning up to the max. It's all justified because they support the campaign 'saving the planet' with solar and wind power—as long as they're built in someone else's backyard.

Infrastructure is supposed to make life easier, not harder. Infrastructure is designed to add to our productive capacity and to grow the pie for all Australians. We hear so often that workers don't deserve pay rises because they've stopped working hard and productivity has declined. Let me ask: what happened to the government working harder? What happened to infrastructure that makes the internet faster, freight-forwarding faster, electricity cheaper and products like timber, cement and steel readily available and accessible? This is what makes workers more productive: better tools and better supplies. Make no mistake: under this Albanese government the lives of everyday Australians will be harder, pay packets will not go as far and opportunities for advancement will become harder and harder to find.

One Nation's Queensland infrastructure program includes building the east-west railroad across the Top End, from Western Australia to North Queensland, to provide market access for the extraction and grazing industries. But that's not all it will do. These industries frequently have Aboriginal owners or employ a high proportion of Aboriginal staff. And there's tourism. One Nation will build a multipurpose corridor in the same footprint as that railway line to bring power, water, the internet and local train travel to Aboriginal and rural communities. We would build the steel parks and take more of the $2 trillion steel market for Australians, growing our economy with breadwinner jobs and solid foreign exchange earnings. We would build the Great Dividing Range project: a dam, hydro and irrigation project to deliver environmentally-friendly economic growth to North Queensland—G power will unleash North Queensland! One Nation will build the Emu Swamp Dam, the Urannah irrigation project, the Big Rocks Weir and the Hughenden Irrigation Project.

One Nation will run the inland rail from Five Star into Queensland, along the Moonie Highway alignment and then across to Miles, then through Wandoan to Banana, to terminate at the port of Gladstone. We will connect the port of Gladstone to the east-west rail line to create a national rail route that will take hundreds of thousands of heavy truck movements of the roads while improving transit times. We will not build the Pioneer pumped hydro project, as this not only destroys the environment of the Pioneer Valley but is also a complete fraud on the part of Premier Palaszczuk. This project is a fake big idea to win votes in the city in the next election and take attention off the Mackay Base Hospital's many problems that the government has caused. It will also waste millions in feasibility studies that will ultimately showed this is a really stupid idea—a dishonest idea.

To guarantee Australia's power supply, we need only to build coal-fired power stations using new technology. This new technology shows the public the hypocrisy of their renewable lobby. They criticise coal as being dirty so that industry develops the technology that captures the carbon dioxide and turns it into useful projects—fertiliser, fuel and hydrogen. This new technology allows clean energy to meet our net zero targets providing reliable baseload power at a fraction of the cost of solar and wind, I don't give a damn about UN net-zero targets, but if you want to meet them, here is a way of doing it productively. This should be supported across this parliament, yet these net zero vandals will not admit the transition is a disaster harming everyday Australians and will never deliver cheap, reliable energy. Why are you doing it? Why? What's your agenda? I suggest it is to orchestrate a power shortage in transport and production in order to usher in a new era of Soviet-style control. You have already shown it—the complete subjugation of Australia, as has been occurring since the signing of the UN's Lima declaration in 1975 by Prime Minister Whitlam under Labor, ratified the following year by Liberal Prime Minister Fraser.

Labor destroys; One Nation will build. One Nation will build so that people can build. Human progress and economic prosperity depend on human initiative, and that needs opportunity and support. Opportunity and support flourish on freedom and on infrastructure for businesses to grow. Small businesses rely on infrastructure and start growing. There are eight keys to human progress in my belief. The first is freedom—the freedom to come up with ideas, exchange ideas, implement ideas. The second is rule of law—we have seen that smashed in the last three years. The third is stable, solid, sustainable, continuing governance—a Constitution. We have that. We have one of the world's best Constitutions. Number four is securing of property rights, which were stolen by the Howard-Anderson Liberal and National Party government from 1996 through to 2007. They stole farmers' property rights, the key to human progress. The fifth thing is strong families—they are being destroyed by policies put in place by the United Nations since 1975 with the Family Law Act—the slaughterhouse of the nation.

Cheap energy is fundamental and the most significant factor for human progress—affordable, accessible, reliable, dependable, secure and stable. A taxation system that is efficient—not inefficient as the current system is. Lastly is honest money—we need to return to a people's bank in this country. The Commonwealth Bank, when it was the people's bank early last century, was responsible for human progress in this country—dramatic progress. We had only five million people, but the Commonwealth Bank took care of building our country into a big country. Australia 120 and 110 years ago had the highest per capita income in the world.

To build a nation, people need infrastructure. People build a nation. People need infrastructure to build a nation. Australia has done this—we rose to number one in the world. That is instead of what Labor is doing now, which is a complete subjugation of Australia. Labor destroys; One Nation will build. The people of Australia have already proven we can build, and they have done it many times.