Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

The Liberal-National Party's approach to infrastructure development is perfectly represented by one project in Sydney. That is the Sydney south-east light rail project. The Berejiklian Liberal government said this project would cost $1.6 billion. It's actually going to cost the New South Wales taxpayers $2.7 billion due to a $576 million settlement with the contractor because the government provided dodgy advice on the first hand. The project is more than a year overdue. So we've got over a billion dollar blow out in the cost of the project and it's more than a year overdue. That is representative of the Liberal-National coalition's approach to infrastructure development.

You can't trust the Liberals when it comes to developing nation-building infrastructure. While they're busy congratulating themselves on making announcements, many of their projects at a federal level remain years away. The coalition's so-called $100 billion infrastructure pipeline is nothing more than a pipe dream. Of course, less than 30 per cent of the infrastructure program is budgeted for the next four years. For many of the projects, the shovels are far from ready, and it follows a poor record of spending—$5.1 billion less on infrastructure than promised over its first six years in government, and that included $100 million worth of projects in its Black Spot Program, $154 million for the Bridges Renewal Program and more than $900 million in its Western Sydney Infrastructure Plan. Funding has been provided for all these projects, but milestones haven't been met. In many cases, projects haven't even started, and yet the coalition talked such a big game in the recent federal election on infrastructure. But the Australian people are now rightly concerned by this government's refusal to bring forward some of those infrastructure projects to boost what is a floundering economy and protect and create jobs in Australia.

The government continues to ignore calls from the Reserve Bank of Australia, economists and state coalition Treasurers to bring forward infrastructure investment. The government needs to look at fiscal stimulus in the economy, and infrastructure is an important part of doing that. The benefits are clear: stimulating a sluggish economy, boosting productivity, improving road safety and busting congestion. Not only has the government ignored these calls; it consistently fails to deliver funding that is allocated in its budgets. And while the rest of the nation remains hard at work, the government is calling in a sickie and putting the real nation-building projects off for another day.

Instead, it's only action on infrastructure in this term has been abolishing the $3.9 billion Building Australia Fund set aside to fund critical nation-building infrastructure, not to mention the fact that this government is undermining the role of Infrastructure Australia, the body that was set up to take the politics out of infrastructure development in Australia and stop the process of one side of politics promising something and then the other side getting elected and cancelling it, and then the other side promising something and then the other side getting elected and cancelling it. Australians are sick and tired of it. It's costing our nation billions of dollars and foregone productivity improvements through this process. That's why Labor established Infrastructure Australia, to take the politics out of it to ensure that independent experts were assessing and ranking infrastructure projects in Australia. Well this government, by moves such as abolishing the Building Australia Fund, is undermining that independence and putting at jeopardy proper infrastructure development in our economy.

Cuts to public transport investment have resulted in worsening traffic congestion. That's eroded Australians' quality of life and reduced productivity by restricting the movement of freight around our cities and towns. Our nation is crying out for a comprehensive infrastructure plan. We need it now, not in the forward estimates years. We need to tackle urban congestion, boost the productivity of our freight and logistics sector, save lives on our roads, unlock the full potential of our regions and drive economic growth in the years ahead. And the government should stop congratulating itself for just making announcements. We need shovels in the ground, projects started and jobs for Australians. It should be working with the states to find out why so many projects for which money is available simply aren't being built. Australia needs action now to help create economic activity and jobs in the short-term while boosting productivity over the longer term.

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