Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I will begin by making a brief observation about the estimates process, particularly since the minister is Leader of the House—and I do this in a genuine spirit of trying to make this process work better. I have been disappointed that this year’s estimates process has been largely taken up by speeches by government members which have occupied the time and therefore denied the capacity for opposition members to ask serious questions of the minister and give them an opportunity to give account for their stewardship of their portfolio. I am not suggesting that anybody has broken the standing orders or that the Speaker has ruled inappropriately in those matters, but the spirit and the conduct of the estimates process has changed this year.

It was, I think, a convention that this time was used essentially by opposition members to ask questions of the minister. I have to say that as a minister I quite enjoyed the challenge, even though sometimes I would be found out, including sometimes by the member opposite when he was asking questions of me. But I think we do need to look at the standing orders to make this process meaningful, because it is the only opportunity for members of parliament to ask questions of ministers as a part of the budget process. Whilst I am not suggesting that we follow the Senate line, I think the difference between the two houses’ processes has drifted too far and it is an issue that ought to be addressed, perhaps by the Procedure Committee of the parliament.

Let me use my few moments then to ask a series of questions of the minister. I will not spend time rebutting his opening remarks, even though some of them are obviously open to substantial challenge. I want to ask him about road funding and a series of road funding issues. In particular I want to ask him to confirm that all the promises made by Labor during the election campaign will in fact be honoured. If they are to be honoured, how will they be funded? If the money is to come from AusLink 1 and AusLink 2, what will happen to the priorities that have already been developed for AusLink 1 and AusLink 2, which of course were developed in consultation with the states and the Commonwealth? Bearing in mind that the states—Labor states at the present time—pay part of the cost of these projects and so they have been very much involved in the development of those priorities, what is going to happen to those priorities if the government intends to fund its election promises through AusLink?

Does the federal government intend to have the priorities for AusLink changed or are they simply going to override the existing priorities? How did Labor choose its priorities? Were they merit based? Is it just coincidence that most of these new projects are in electorates now held by Labor? Are Labor’s election promises to be subject to Infrastructure Australia assessment to determine their relative merits compared with other projects which Labor did not choose? If Infrastructure Australia is genuinely to establish priorities, are all of Labor’s election promises to be immune from that process and therefore not subject to any kind of scrutiny?

In that regard, I refer to comments made by the Prime Minister in the Sydney press in February 2007 when he was Leader of the Opposition, when he said that road-funding priorities would be shifted under Labor towards the cities, particularly Sydney, and then the minister’s own statements later that too much money had been spent on roads in regional Australia and that the new government would be moving future funding away from highways in regional areas to city projects.

What projects in non-metropolitan areas are to be axed to fund the new priorities? For instance, could I refer to the Cooroy to Curra project on the Bruce Highway, some of which I acknowledge is in my own electorate? Our highway is still one of the worst and has been identified by the RACQ, and indeed by the Australian roads authorities, as either the worst or near the worst road in Queensland. This is a road from which Labor intends to take $500 million between now and 2013.

In this same area, I refer to the Ipswich Motorway project. The minister’s office told the Courier-Mail last week that there was no commitment to fund the Darra to Rocklea section of the highway, and then there was a statement by the Prime Minister that it would in fact be funded. Where is this money to come from? The Prime Minister has suggested that it would come from the Building Australia Fund, but if it does not meet the priorities there it will come from AusLink. Is that AusLink 2 or AusLink 3? The newspaper suggests it is AusLink 3, in which case the money would not be available until some time after 2014. (Time expired)

See this speech in context