Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

I am happy to rise today to speak on the AusLink (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2008. Not only is the AusLink program very important in my electorate but it remains at the front of mind for many people in regional electorates as well as urban electorates. The bill has several purposes. Most importantly, it extends the coalition’s popular and successful Roads to Recovery program. It also changes the definition of a road to allow for the funding of heavy vehicle facilities such as rest stops and parking bays and allows funds under the Roads to Recovery program to be preserved while determinations are made as to who is the most appropriate entity to receive them.

AusLink, which was established by the Howard government, has been extraordinarily successful in delivering transport infrastructure on a national scale and, just as importantly, at a regional level. It has been a forward-thinking and forward-reaching plan that has provided crucial road and rail upgrades right across Australia. Some of those road and rail upgrades have not only made our communities safer but boosted our productivity and particularly our export ability. This was not a haphazard plan but a carefully detailed and implemented series of projects to provide for the needs of both city and regional residents.

The AusLink program was so effective in providing for Australia’s infrastructure requirements that in May last year the coalition government announced a record amount of $22.3 billion for AusLink 2 to continue the work. That formed the centre of an overall $30 billion in roads and rail infrastructure that we took to the last election. AusLink has been a successful program because it is so comprehensive. It considers large-scale projects of national significance alongside smaller community projects under the Roads to Recovery program. With the Roads to Recovery program in particular, we are able to bypass the state governments, who, in the past, have squirrelled this money away and allocated it on a political seat basis rather than see local communities and local councils receive the money.

As I mentioned, one of the features of this bill is that it retains the popular Roads to Recovery program. I am glad to see that on this issue the Rudd government has embraced the foresight of the previous government. This bill extends the Roads to Recovery program from 1 July 2009 to 30 June 2014, allowing for this good work to continue. The Roads to Recovery program provides for road upgrades right across this vast nation of ours. These are roads that workers and families travel on, day in, day out, to get to their jobs, their schools, their rural properties or to businesses or commercial operations the length and breadth of Australia.

The Roads to Recovery program has made a real difference to people’s lives. That is not a theory; that is actually what has happened in practice. Upgrades and repairs made under this program have addressed priorities across Australia’s vast network of roads. This has been of great assistance to local councils. In my electorate of Groom we have seen real road improvements fast-tracked because this money was able to be delivered direct to the council. The council, the local people on the ground who are using the roads every day, are able to ensure that the money is spent in the right place. As I said, doing that bypasses the state governments, who have tried to use this money in the past for other purposes.

It has also been able to address particularly—again, in my electorate but I know this is the case right across the nation—the neglect of Labor state governments of roads that are absolutely their responsibility, address the neglect that Labor governments have continued particularly in regional Australia. We have seen the final realisation of that in the backlash of regional areas towards the Western Australian government. That government, which was a terrible government in so many regards, luckily has been thrown out of office and replaced by a government which will be an alliance between the Liberal and National parties and which will, between the Liberal Party and the National Party, ensure that regional areas are taken care of. The Roads to Recovery program will be part of that but the funding will still, as I said, go directly to councils.

It is concerning that as we look at roads in Australia we see that the Rudd government, as it is doing everywhere, is all talk and no action. If we look at the situation with roads, we see quite clearly that the Rudd government is not listening when it comes to the rest of the AusLink package. Instead, it is imposing shackles on motorists and families so that this government can use AusLink for its political advantage. I am disappointed that the member for Oxley has left the chamber, because he knows only too well the problems that his constituents face as a result of changes this Rudd government has made to the Howard government’s plans to build roads. I will come back to that in a moment.

This government must live up to its obligations to deliver road and infrastructure funding, not just in capital cities but in regional and rural Australia as well. So far there have been alarming signs on this count as the government has overlooked the needs of regional Australia, not just on roads but practically on every service provision coming from the Commonwealth. While local communities may be relieved that the Roads to Recovery program has avoided the Rudd government razor gang, the Rudd government has shown that it is able to in fact even mess that up. It is disappointing that this government refuses to honour the other commitments made under AusLink.

Along with providing millions of dollars to fix local roads, AusLink projects of particular significance in Queensland have been delayed or in some cases completely put off the page. In my area, the proposed Toowoomba Range crossing is a road that I accept has been very difficult to get past the bean counters. It is a $2 billion road that would service only 25,000 to 27,000 vehicles a day. If you compare that to Ipswich Road, which services 100,000 vehicles a day and is at capacity, or the Gateway motorway, which services a similar number, the investment required in the Toowoomba Range crossing is enormous.

It had taken me 10 years—which I accept is 10 years too many—to get to the stage where we had government funding for that proposal, where we had $700 million allocated in last year’s budget as a result of my relentless efforts to ensure that the residents of Toowoomba do not have driving down their main street heavy vehicles like cattle trucks and what goes with them. I will not enlighten the chamber as to what falls out of cattle trucks while they are driving along: it is legal but smelly, and I am not talking about engine emissions. That sort of heavy transport, along with trucks carrying heavy freight, minerals and coal, are all traversing Toowoomba’s main street, not only endangering the lives of people who have to use that road to get to school but also creating an enormous cost for the transport industry as they negotiate the traffic lights up and down James Street and, as a result of that, add to our greenhouse gas emissions. The Toowoomba Range crossing has been on the drawing boards for probably 30 years, and now we are seeing the residents of Toowoomba taking up the issue themselves, because what we have seen from this government is a minister who is prepared to play politics now with the lives and the needs of the people of Toowoomba.

On the previous sitting Thursday, the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government stood up in the House and said to the coalition members, including me, who had asked for funding for roads that if we did not support the new taxes that his government was trying to pass in the Senate then he would make sure we got no money. He would make sure that the coalition seats were not funded. In case anyone has any doubt about that, they can consult the Hansard, where the minister said:

Well, they cannot have it both ways.

If that is not him saying to me, ‘If you don’t pass our new taxes you will get no money,’ I do not know anything. That was not only a threat against the constituents of Toowoomba but a threat against the democratic processes of government. We have a Senate which is entitled to review legislation, but this government has quite dishonestly gone to the electorate not mentioning new taxes and then has said to the Senate, ‘If you don’t pass our new taxes, all of the people who have written to me aren’t going to get anything.’ He had a folder which was quite big, and I asked him to table my letter and he did. I was proud to have it tabled because it showed that as a local member I was standing up for my people. In doing that he said to all those constituents of all those coalition people, ‘You are going to get nothing unless they agree to our new taxes.’ That is an absolute disgrace.

I sit here after having spent 10 years on this and having successfully got $43 million for the prefeasibility works on that range crossing, having successfully used my influence and my persuasive powers and, dare I say, my charm to get $2 billion out of the federal government, to get them to commit $700 million in the budget last May. Now that money has been ripped off the table and I have been threatened across the chamber by a minister who is only ever interested in politics and looking after his people in his seat in Sydney. The inner-city seats are important but they are no more important than all those other seats that make up this wonderful country of ours.

Without this range crossing, not only will Toowoomba’s economic growth be affected but the economic growth of seats right across northern Australia will be affected. If the minister looked closely, he would see he is affecting the economic growth of Labor held seats, of seats like those of the members in the Northern Territory, seats like Solomon, as trucks pass through my city to take freight to Darwin. What the minister does not understand, as he plays politics at every opportunity, is that he is actually hurting people he claims to represent, not to mention threatening the people that I represent.

Whenever we talk to the Rudd government these days about money for roads, we get a long litany of reviews and reconsiderations and buck-passing and blame—all the things we have got used to from this government. And at the same time the safety of motorists and the economic efficiency and growth of Australia and its people are stalled. As in so many areas of the Rudd government, we see a review taking place that kills the momentum that was already building up.

AusLink was a program that was introduced by our government. Everyone would have liked to have seen more money in it but we cannot forget that we had to pay off $96 billion worth of debt. In doing that we set aside money to ensure that telecommunications and universities of the future were also funded and that the superannuation of defence personnel and public servants was also covered. But that is done. We gave this government a balance sheet which would be the envy of any government in the world. We gave them a balance sheet where they had the opportunity to honour the commitments that our government had made. In the case of the Toowoomba Range crossing, we provided the money for it in the May budget last year; we gave them the opportunity to do something.

What have they done? They have cut the budget. They cut the budget so that they could build up an enormous slush fund. Probably next year and perhaps the year after—if they go that far—they will reallocate this money to urban seats that the Labor Party hold and want to win. The process has gone out the window. The certainty has gone out the window. The $43 million that has been spent on the Toowoomba Range crossing as a result of my efforts and the beginning of work on that new road, which was due to commence this year, have been put on the backburner while we have yet another review. Roads are very important, but we see the Rudd Labor government ‘announcing’ the scoping study of a project in my electorate which had already been given the green light by the previous Howard government. It was not just a green light: $700 million was allocated in last year’s budget.

It is not just roads that are important under AusLink: there is a very strong need for the development of rail links in Australia to carry the freight task. This is a freight task which will double over the next two years, a freight task which will grow as we grow and prosper—and we can only hope that we grow and prosper; I must admit that the first 10 months are not too hopeful. We have seen real wages fall because inflation is eating up the gains made by the previous government. The government cannot do anything about petrol even though they said they could. They have admitted they cannot do anything about grocery prices even though they had said they could. They have admitted that they cannot do anything about just about everything unless they have a review. So we are seeing unemployment starting to go up. We see concerns out in the community amongst small business and amongst the investment community. But, if the economy keeps growing, we are going to see that freight task double and we are going to need more freight carried by rail.

Depending on the foresight of the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government—and I hope that foresight is there—we will see in my electorate the establishment of an inland rail link, which initially may terminate at Toowoomba. That freight will then have to be moved to Brisbane by road, which is why the range crossing is so important. That inland rail link will link, predominantly by rail, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. By continuing that rail link up to Gladstone, we will have the opportunity to open up the resources of western Queensland. But this does need a coherent policy from government. It needs a government that is prepared to make the hard decisions. It needs a government that does not continually pass the buck and try to blame other people for the situation.

In the last moments of this speech, I will also touch on an area that the current government is trying to ram through—increases in heavy vehicle registration fees—where it is making a $70 million heavy vehicle safety and productivity package dependent on parliamentary approval of the fee hikes. The transport industry in Australia plays an incredibly important part in servicing not only our economy but also the needs of people with goods and consumables. Making the safety package contingent on the passing of another tax grab against truck drivers shows again that this government is putting politics ahead of safety and ahead of the viability of the trucking industry.

There are things that can be done in the trucking industry, things that both sides of this House should support. There is the technology now to use things like GPS and satellite communications to ensure that the performance of drivers is compliant with the rules and regulations in relation to truck driving. As one of the few people in this House who has a heavy vehicle licence, I am all for strong regulation and strong enforcement of that regulation, but I am not in favour of truckies being fined because they have forgotten to put a full stop or to cross a ‘t’ in their logbooks.

We need to look at the opportunities. We need to work with the trucking industry to introduce and trial some of these technologies that will allow truckies to get on with the business—that is, driving these trucks safely—and will allow their driving to be monitored in such a way that the pedantry and pettiness that go on now over whether or not the logbooks are filled out correctly can be set to one side. Not only will we get a more accurate picture of how these trucks are being driven but we will enhance the safety of all road users. I recommend that members of the House look at proposals that are being put forward by the Australian Trucking Association and people like David Simon from Simon Transport, in my electorate, not only to have better and safer monitoring but to relieve truckies of the burden of paperwork that they inevitably find themselves tied up in by those who sit opposite.

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