Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, I do not think there is any secret about that. We will be investing in infrastructure that goes into the port—the port infrastructure that we need into the future.

I want to make one other comment, and that is that we need to look at the future of this fuel excise as the basic funder of a lot of our road projects. Over the next five to 10 years, as we see a move to more and more hybrid and electric vehicles, the funding model that is based on the fuel excise is going to become more problematic. We have to do some long-term thinking about how we ensure that we have a proper finance base for funding the road and public transport infrastructure that we will need, as some very disruptive technology is going to emerge. We probably will not see this in any numbers for five years, but I suspect that, in five to 10 years, and certainly from 10 to 15 years, we will see a massive shift away from fuel based vehicles to electric vehicles. We all have to start thinking about how then we ensure that we have the right revenue streams in place. But I am very pleased that we have been able to help local government put themselves back on a stronger financial base by agreeing to this. We still disagree with the FAGs cuts, but at least this will go, to a very significant extent, to enabling those local communities to reinstate employment at a time when it is much needed.

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