Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

I commend the amendment to the House. It is important that those in rural, regional and remote Australia have a strong voice in terms of Infrastructure Australia. The Australian road network spans some 800,000 kilometres; 600,000 kilometres is under the management of local government, a disproportionately high proportion of which deals with rural, regional and remote communities. Before I go to my contribution, I want to highlight the fact that we've had from the minister perhaps a nomination for understatement of the year when she said to the shadow minister, 'I was a little tardy in my response to you.' My understanding is that that response came 10 months or so after the shadow minister wrote to her. If that's 'a little tardy', that is a meritorious nomination in the category of understatement of the year.

Of course, questions around efficacy and tardiness—these are things that, I expect, are looming large in the minister's mind because the minister has held the exalted position of minister for infrastructure for 12 months or so, yet only in recent weeks have we received advice, and has the nation been told, 'We're going to undertake a root-and-branch review.' I can understand a newly minted minister in a newly elected government in the early days of that government coming into this place, sitting down and saying, 'You know what; I think we need to undertake a review of the infrastructure pipeline.' That would be fair enough. But I'll tell you what is 'a little tardy'—waiting almost 12 months to do that. All the time we're seeing costs of projects blowing out. Why? Because inflation in and around construction projects is running at six, seven or eight per cent.

Of course projects are more expensive in May 2023 than they were in May 2022; that's the reality. But, in the time I have, I want to point out something that has emanated from this building like a shockwave that's hit road authorities right around the country, whether they're state based road authorities or local government based road authorities. The review I speak of was one that we anticipated would relate only to projects. We had a fair expectation of that because the minister herself indicated that this would relate to projects. In my own home state—

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