Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Wills for his question and for his ongoing interest in infrastructure. Indeed, infrastructure is a key part of the Economic Security Strategy of the government’s response to the global financial crisis, which was outlined by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer just on Tuesday. This is a strategy to have Commonwealth involvement in the delivery of our roads, our railways, our ports, our urban transport systems and our communications networks. Importantly, we established Infrastructure Australia to ensure that proper cost-benefit analysis was brought to the assessment of the nation’s infrastructure needs and the merits of individual projects. Indeed, we have announced that the priority list from Infrastructure Australia will be brought forward by more than three months to December this year.

But, of course, we have not sat around waiting for this report. In the budget we brought forward some half a billion dollars worth of projects that were not scheduled to start until the following financial year—projects such as the Townsville port access road and projects right around the country including in Bunbury and Perth. And shortly we will be introducing legislation to set up the Building Australia Fund. So the government has a very clear plan when it comes to infrastructure development and nation building as an important component of ensuring that we build in a plan for securing long-term prosperity and dealing with the capacity constraints that were, of course, identified by the Reserve Bank on more than 20 separate occasions.

The opposition’s approach has been characterised by inconsistencies and partisan political games. Indeed, when the merchant of Venice was hunting down the member for Bradfield to become the Leader of the Opposition—hunting him down, day in, day out—he was saying that the then Leader of the Opposition was doing damage to the Liberal Party brand because he was damaging their economic credentials. Remember the criticism about budget measures and the opposition leader’s—

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