Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

Appropriation Bill (No. 5) 2008-2009 and Appropriation Bill (No. 6) 2008-2009 provide routine finance for the operation of the government and, in accordance with the usual traditions, are not likely to be opposed by the opposition—but that will not stop us from drawing attention to some of the deficiencies in what is proposed. Some of these measures are associated with the government’s infrastructure packages and the like, and no doubt a debate will follow in relation to a wide range of infrastructure and other types of activities to which these bills refer.

I propose to speak especially about the appropriations of approximately $1.85 billion to fund a variety of investments in rail, roads and water infrastructure. Many individual projects within the bill are sensible and are continuations of projects put in place by the previous coalition government, while others are the result of Senate deals with the minor parties and the Independents and certainly seem to have a readily identifiable ideological bent to them.

The stated intent of these bills is nation building—Labor’s catch-all term for just about all spending these days. Put a pink batt in someone’s roof and that is nation building. Install a boom gate on a remote rail crossing—that is nation building. Build a library in a school, even if it is replacing one built only a few months ago, and that is nation building. Anything can be packaged up by Labor’s spin doctors and logrollers as nation building these days, so it seems. And so much of what is being proposed under the various infrastructure projects is simply ill thought through. The projects have not been properly identified as priorities.

The titles are also a rather grandiose description of what the government might like to think the public expected from these projects but which they will rarely deliver. For instance, consider the Nation Building and Jobs Plan—the government has acknowledged that it is not actually going to create any jobs at all. All it does is, it claims, sustain 90,000 jobs. That works out at about $450,000 for every single job sustained—hardly, one would think, a sound investment if its objective is preserving just 90,000 jobs.

Then it talks about nation building, but so few of the projects that are being funded by the government in its spending sprees will actually deliver us a stronger and more robust nation. So much of the money is simply going in cash splashes—money being sent out to enjoy five minutes of sunshine but which we will be paying back for generations. If you are going to invest money in tough times to try and boost the economy, surely it should be invested in things that will have a lasting benefit for our economy—even if some of those projects may not completely stack up in a cost-benefit analysis. If you are building a road or a rail line or a port, there is something there to help our country recover—to grow and be stronger in the future. Investments in infrastructure have a lasting benefit and can genuinely be called nation building, but so much of what is listed—in fact, most of what is listed in the government’s so-called nation-building package—is just spending. It is about spending, not about building the nation.

Former Labor leader Mark Latham could not have been clearer or more accurate when he described his former party’s approach to dealing with the economic downturn gripping Australia. He said:

They have jumped all over the financial crisis, not with a clear economic strategy in mind, but with an urgent sense of the political opportunity it presents.

Those are the words of Mark Latham.

The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education has, in particular, reinforced the words of President Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff, who said, ‘A serious crisis should never be allowed to go to waste.’ The Deputy Prime Minister is going to be a very busy minister as she has demanded that all the schools that receive new libraries and other buildings under the government’s $42 billion spendathon must invite her to the opening. If she cannot make it, a local Labor party official will get the nod to unveil the plaque. The opposition has previously drawn attention to the unsatisfactory conditions associated with these openings.

This will be the first time that the conditions will actually allow for a branch member of the ALP—with no qualifications, no skills and no particular relevance to the project—to be invited along to do the opening. There may be sitting in the audience a member of the opposition, the local member of federal parliament, or even a shadow minister or a parliamentary secretary. He or she will not be invited to do the opening, but some local person who just happens to be an ALP member—who has paid his membership, or the union has paid his membership or a branch stacker has paid his membership—can do these official openings. I think that is a very disturbing development in the politicisation of what should be recognised as a government program and taxpayer funded expenditure. But that is not what the Deputy Prime Minister proposes to do. In the end, I guess all these plaque unveilings are going to be a form of paid advertising for the Australian Labor Party.

To meet the deadline set by the government, some 100 new facilities will have to be opened every school week—for years after I and the Deputy Prime Minister have left this place and are known largely only to the pages of Hansard. Generations of schoolchildren will look at these bronze plaques in every schoolyard in Australia, and they will ask: ‘Who is Julia Gillard?’ I just hope that the teacher has the presence of mind to tell the students that it was Ms Gillard and her boss, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who created the federal debt that those children and their parents will have to pay off. In reality, what the schoolchildren of Australia will be getting over the next two years is a new building—whether or not they want it—plus $9,500 each in debt that will have to be repaid. In return for their school building and the rest of the cash splash, they will each have an obligation to pay back an average of $9,500 to cover the $200 billion credit limit that the government now has on its credit card. Apart from the Bradford batts makers, another section of Australian industry that is obviously going to do very well out of Labor’s nation building is the plaque makers. Every project will have to have a plaque and an opportunity for a Labor apparatchik to turn up and have their photo taken at an official opening.

My concern about this legislation is the utterly haphazard way in which the federal Labor government is spending money and the way it is determining priorities and accumulating taxpayer debt at a level never before seen in this country. Many of these plans have been designed simply to be announced in time for the six o’clock news or drafted on the drink coasters on the VIP flight to Papua New Guinea. They are not carefully thought through strategies. There has been no modelling of their likely impact. The government is walking away from the most basic claims about whether or not these projects will be able to create jobs. There is no evidence as to how the stimulus will actually flow through into the economy; it is simply designed to get a cheap headline in the six o’clock news.

As an example, without a shadow of doubt rail is an area where the government has demonstrated that it has not got a clue what it is doing. Last February, the Minister for Finance and Deregulation announced that he had drilled into proposed federal spending and found $500 million that could be stripped out as part of the government’s now-forgotten war on inflation. Remember the war on inflation and the inflation genie that was out of the bottle? The government had to cut expenditure because it was so worried about inflation. Now it is spending like money is going out of fashion to do precisely the opposite. Not only could the government not read the economy at the time; it also clearly had no idea how to draft a coherent economic strategy for the future.

Among the spending that was targeted in this $500 million cut—most of which was in regional Australia—was $65 million to upgrade the railway line between Parkes and Cootamundra in south-west New South Wales. This was to be deferred for two years, the finance minister said. This funding had actually been brought forward by the previous coalition government, because we recognised the importance of upgrading these working rail lines which are necessary for the movement of freight through the eastern states. The government obviously disagreed. All that fine talk of nation building, removing infrastructure bottlenecks and increasing Australia’s food security counted for nothing last February when this crucial upgrade was canned. The finance minister and the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government both linked the two-year deferral to the fact that the final route for the inland rail between Melbourne and Brisbane had not been determined. They chose to ignore the fact that, whatever route was chosen, the line would still need upgrading. That truth was confirmed in Labor’s $4.7 billion infrastructure package, where the project is among those to be brought forward by two years. The project had been deferred for two years, and now it is to be brought forward by two years, which puts it precisely where it was when the previous government left office. The reason given was: a full upgrade of the corridor needs to be undertaken to bring it to interstate network standard—which is exactly what the coalition has been saying all along.

This reminds me a little bit of the announcement about the study into the inland railway. This was canned in the finance minister’s statement, and then the minister for infrastructure announced exactly the same study—using a press release with hardly any words changed from the one by the former minister for transport, Mark Vaile—when re-announcing exactly the same funding a few months later. It was cancelled one week and then, a couple of months later, re-announced as though it was some great new initiative by the Rudd government, except that he used exactly the same press release as was previously used by the transport minister when it was first announced by the coalition many months earlier. Instead of starting some of these projects in 2008, which was the time frame indicated by the previous government, now they are going to start a bit later because of the bureaucratic incompetence of this government. So much for ‘urgent nation building’ under Labor.

The majority of funds sought in this bill relate to increasing equity in the Australian Rail Track Corporation by $1.189 billion so it can continue its infrastructure investment program. Primarily, in this instance, the investment will be in the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales, where rail lines have been allowed to run down and become impossibly congested under the Carr, Iemma and Rees state Labor governments. The coalition recognise the critical importance of upgrading the interstate rail network—something which was comprehensively ignored by the Hawke and Keating governments. We provided $2.4 billion over five years to fund the ARTC and to upgrade those poorly maintained rail lines so that rail could again play an important part in moving freight and passengers around Australia.

It is absolutely critical for Australia’s future transport task that rail accepts a larger share of the responsibility. Unless rail can double its workload over the next 15 to 20 years, we will have to treble or quadruple the number of trucks on our national highway system—and no-one believes that that is an acceptable alternative. As the transport task doubles, we will inevitably need to have double the number of trucks, double the number of trains and double the number of ships if we are going to be able to maintain that task. If one of those partners in the transport task does not achieve its share of the load, the others will have to pick up a bigger share of the burden.

So rail needs to do a lot, lot more. I am one of those who believe that rail can efficiently and reliably provide long-haul freight to keep the Australian economy moving and do it reliably and well. It has not done it for such a long time. Trains have lost market share not because their freight is more expensive but essentially because they have a reputation for being unreliable. A lot of that certainly goes back to the bad old days when the rail system was run by the trade union movement, which was more interested in finding ways to stop the trains than to actually keep them going, where disputes between various trade unions held the public to ransom rather than have those matters properly sorted out through appropriate negotiations.

It is a disappointment that the government now, through its new so-called Fair Work arrangements, seeks to reinstate some of the rules and regulations that led to the bad old days of the past. Union power is to be restored as a part of their reward for backing the Labor Party in the last federal election and providing many millions of dollars of political funding for their campaigns. The reward unions are getting will certainly result in a high price having to be paid by the Australian people, for less reliable services, higher costs, lost jobs and a less efficient economy.

Remember the bad old days, when we were told that it was simply impossible for the cranes on the wharves to load more containers—it could not be done. Well, it is being done and, in fact, now Australia goes close to world standards in relation to moving freight around the ports. Our ports have become more reliable, and that is part of the reason that our export industries have been able to grow and that we can have strong coal, iron ore and other industries in Australia. But, if we let the unions back in control of those sorts of operations, it will be back to the bad old days—the times that we thought had been well and truly put behind us.

I notice that the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government has previously criticised the coalition for providing funding to the ARTC. When we provided three payments, between 2004 and 2006, totalling $820 million, for rail upgrades around Australia, the now minister was a staunch critic of that action. I welcome the fact that the government has again, it seems, had a change of heart and that it does recognise the importance of the ARTC investing in building a better rail infrastructure network across the nation. A lot more still needs to be done to unify the entire network—to get those states and those sections of the line that are not part of the system at the present time included—so that we can have a more seamless movement of rail freight traffic across the nation. Unless most of the traffic between east and west and the long hauls between north and south are converted to rail, our road network will become even more gridlocked and expenditure on roads will have to grow enormously.

So I move now to the proposals in this bill in relation to road funding. The bill proposes to bring forward $711 million to accelerate spending on roads such as the Bulahdelah bypass on the Pacific Highway, the Western Ring Road in Melbourne and the Douglas Arterial Road on the Bruce Highway in Townsville. Movement on all of these projects is welcome. But I do make a few critical points. This work would not be possible if the coalition government had not had the foresight to do the necessary preliminary work and agreed to pay for them. The Pacific Highway is a case in point. In the early 1990s, Prime Minister Paul Keating signed a deal with the then New South Wales coalition government that would see responsibility placed upon the state to upgrade this highway. All proceeded for a little while, until the Carr government came to town and effectively slowed down the spending on the Pacific Highway—which contains some of the worst black spots in the nation—to a trickle.

In 1996, the coalition came to power federally and put in place a program that took federal spending up to about one-third of the overall cost of upgrading of the Pacific Highway. This later grew to fifty-fifty, and now it seems—with the decline of the truly dreadful New South Wales government—even more federal dollars will have to be stumped up to keep the upgrade process going, as New South Wales reduces its spending by $300 million. I am indeed alarmed that New South Wales has not paid a higher price of reneging on this deal in relation to funding of the Pacific Highway. It is disappointing that the federal Labor government seems to believe it needs to step in and prop up the Rees government, which is walking away from its responsibilities, by providing additional federal funding. That additional federal funding comes at the cost of other projects in New South Wales and other projects in other states that are not being funded because the federal government has decided instead to bail out the underperforming New South Wales government.

In the Hunter Valley, we have the link road between the F3 and the New England Highway, between Seahampton and Branxton. This is a ‘shovel ready’ project, because the coalition in government got it to that stage 16 months ago. If you ever wanted to get a project started today—a project employing hundreds of people and providing a short-, medium- and long-term return to the nation—this is such a project. But, after years of allegedly supporting it from opposition, what has happened to this vital project since the Rudd government came to town? It has been thrown on the backburner. The Minister for Defence and member for Hunter told local media right up to election day that Labor would ‘absolutely match’ the coalition’s commitment. But what happened the day after the election? Labor did not have the money anymore. That was certainly news to the federal Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, which had, after consultations with the New South Wales government, concluded that a federal contribution of $780 million, on top of the $107 million already delivered, would be enough to complete the necessary 40 kilometres of dual divided carriageway.

I will now turn to my own electorate and the upgrade of the Cooroy to Curra stretch of the Bruce Highway. It is a sorely needed project and could have started almost immediately had the Labor government matched the coalition’s commitment of $700 million for the construction from AusLink II. I am disgusted that the retiring Queensland roads minister, Warren Pitt, is quoted in the Gympie Times today as saying that this project could start almost immediately if federal funding is approved. This is a dishonest, pre-election stunt by Mr Pitt—whom I note is actually retiring at the next election. He knows that the Rudd Labor government has slashed AusLink funding for this road to just $200 million—and that has to last until 2014. To go to the people of Gympie, who desperately want this road constructed, and say to them that all that is required is approval from the federal government when he knows that the new federal government has slashed the available money for this project is simply dishonest and deceitful.

Since 2000, 54 people have been killed on this road, and there have been four fatal accidents since the government lowered the speed limit on this section of the national highway to 90 kilometres an hour just before Christmas. This road is a killing field. Accidents are reported almost every week. There are horrific accidents. It is unthinkable that any government should cut funding for the upgrading and improvement of this road. I appeal to the Rudd Labor government to put aside the politics and to do something about upgrading this road—and to do it promptly. It will require a lot of money, but the $700 million that the previous government had allocated and was available would make a good start and would help to make work on the remaining sections of this road more achievable.

For all the talk about bringing dollars forward, the Rudd government is still proposing to spend some $5 billion less on roads and rail over the next five years than was committed by the former Howard government. In spite of what the minister says about increased road funding, Labor will actually spend $5 billion less than was committed by the previous Howard government. The forthcoming Infrastructure Australia priority list will identify some more proposed spending but, given the way the federal dollars have disappeared in 2009, it does not look as though the Prime Minister’s promise to spend $70 billion on infrastructure is likely to be honoured—so much for real nation building!

The next section of the bill that I would like to make some comments about is the $500 million provided over this year and the next three financial years for water buybacks in the Murray-Darling Basin. This of course relates to the deal done between the government and South Australia’s Senator Xenophon, which enabled the passage of the government’s $42 billion economic stimulus. Again, the best way to describe Labor’s approach to a wider issue is to focus on one example of its action to date: the absolute farce that was the federal purchase of Toorale Station, near Bourke—a once productive farming property that will be turned into a national park, with its water allocation stripped away and at least 100 jobs lost. This was an illogical use of government money, just as the government’s decisions to continually buy back water from irrigators in the Darling Basin are a lazy way out of delivering water to the Murray.

Infrastructure upgrades, new channels and better water management can deliver more water to the river for environmental flows, without laying waste productive farms, destroying local industries and destroying regional jobs. This government is taking the lazy way by simply going to distressed farmers and seeking to acquire their water licence. It needs to be emphasised to everyone that they are not actually buying any water, because the water is not there; they are buying licences. To actually include $500 million for more water buybacks in what is considered to be a nation-building package, a stimulus package, is clearly ridiculous. This purchase will not stimulate the economy; in fact, it will slow it down. It will guarantee that any recovery is slower, because these regional communities will not have any water to use when the rains return to help contribute to our nation’s economic growth. Whole irrigation districts are at risk of being closed down. Whole rural towns are losing their basic infrastructure because the government is taking a lazy way out in trying to obtain water for the environmental flows for the Murray-Darling system.

We all agree that more water needs to be provided in the system for environmental purposes—and it can be done without stealing the water from the people who are using it now. We can maintain the productivity and still get more water into the system by spending the money—money provided by the previous government—on capital works, not on lazy buybacks. If you build more pipelines, get rid of the leaks and improve the management, you effectively create more water, and that water can be used for environmental purposes. The government’s whole approach to the supply of water to the Murray-Darling Basin is ill considered and inappropriate. It is not nation building; it is nation destroying. The work that has been done by previous generations is being undone by a government that does not have the imagination to fix a problem but prefers to exercise its ideological bent, its distaste for farmers, to try to drive out of existence a whole range of rural and regional communities.

Of course, a lot of this is a stunt as well—for instance, the visit by Minister Wong to Toorale Station a few days ago so that she could have an official opening to open up the valves and let water flow into the river. She wanted to have a picture opportunity. She said, when the government bought the property, that they were going to get rid of the weir, but when it filled up with water she wanted a picture taken of her releasing the water down the river. Because the dam was at the point of overflowing, they actually had to let some go. Water that could have gone into the environment some time ago was being held behind this weir. The minister wanted a picture, so they closed the gates to allow it to fill up again so she could get her picture taken. That is the kind of stunt that is driving the government’s approach to water management and infrastructure.

I will comment favourably on another element of this package. I am sure the shadow parliamentary secretary will also be impressed by the fact that this bill provides a little bit of money for the East Kimberley development package, expanding the Ord. Expanding the Ord has been a dream of the people of Western Australia, and indeed all thinking Australians, for some time. The Western Australian government is now committed to opening up some new irrigation areas, extending the available irrigated area from 14,000 to 28,000 hectares to provide possible large-scale expansion of agriculture in crops like rice and cotton, sandalwood and high-value timbers. It would be good to have sugar as well, except the government refused to keep the sugar mill open while waiting for this development to eventuate, so that option may well have been lost. It is good to see the Western Australian government seizing the initiative to proceed with the Ord and that the federal government is providing some additional funds to enable some of the infrastructure to be provided.

The reality is that this bill provides funding for some worthwhile projects. In normal circumstances it would be warmly welcomed by most on both sides of the House. But, given Labor’s appalling record in management and delivery, I have great doubts that any of the grand visions of nation building, job retention and economic stimulus that the government has been talking about over recent times will ever be delivered. If they are, they will be out of cost, out of time and delivered in an inefficient and, as usual, incompetent way.

See this speech in context