Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Hansard source

We will come to the National Party in a moment, Member for Melbourne Ports. The report argued that, in addition to underpinning economic performance, public infrastructure also features in the social and environmental capital that binds our communities and makes them livable. Two years later, in 2005, that notorious ‘left-wing’ organisation the Business Council of Australia called for urgent action on Australia’s infrastructure problems, warning that the problem of infrastructure blockages was the single greatest barrier to our future prosperity. Unfortunately, whilst the message was put in the bottle, no-one in the government ever collected the message on infrastructure from the beach.

There has been no coherent nationwide planning, coordination or strategy in respect of this nation’s national infrastructure needs. What we inherited from the last government—other than high inflation, foreign debt and slip-sliding productivity—is costly bottlenecks in our export and supply chains. Unfortunately, many of our industries still have to rely on inefficient and outdated infrastructure. And let us not forget education infrastructure. That has been forgotten for too long—for the last 11 years, under the last government.

While Labor has a long-term vision, the previous government lived in a mendicant-surplus state from budget to budget, election year after election year, spreading its largesse in the most short-term of conclusions. Last year’s budget was a typical example of this mendicant tax banditry of the previous government. It was an election year budget that once again was long on short-term largesse but short on long-term ideas about the challenges facing the nation.

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