James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) | Hansard source

I am just checking this is Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2023-2024 we are debating here. I appreciate the previous member's comments on the Tasmanian political scene, which he is very entitled to make on an appropriation bill, but I might come within the envelope of the more than $600 million of Commonwealth government expenditure that we can comment on when talking about appropriation here in this chamber. In particular, as we know, this is a way for the government to revise and adjust their budget predictions through the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook. So this is the government implementing the MYEFO from late last year, which had a lot of things of great concern to me and my community. Regrettably, the most significant is the adjustments to infrastructure funding. We should really call them cuts to infrastructure funding. I know my electorate is not alone. So many parts of the country saw some tragic decisions by this government thanks to the minister's review of the very, very impressive forward program of infrastructure investment the previous government had announced. The current government went to the election claiming they were going to honour it. Much like many other things, whether it be the $275 cut to electricity prices or the legislated stage 3 tax cuts, the infrastructure cut is just another example of the now government saying one thing to get elected and doing a very different thing after that election. Again, I predict that the people of this country will take a very dim view of this and, when they go to the ballot box in the next 12 months or so, have a lot to say about a government that has broken so many promises.

This one's very significant and acute for my community. Most people who are not from Adelaide would be surprised to hear this, but Adelaide is the only capital city that has Highway 1 running through its suburbs. If you circumnavigate Australia, when you get to the big cities or, frankly, even a lot of small towns, you will almost always take a bypass. But due to a range of quirks of history it is the case that, in Adelaide, Highway 1 runs through the suburbs of the city. It goes through the suburbs of my electorate along what's called Portrush Road. The starkest example of the madness of the situation is that heavy freight going from Melbourne to Perth travels through my electorate. There are some 18 traffic lights and seven schools literally upon this thoroughfare. It is just not acceptable that in 2024 we have the major freight route around continental Australia going through the suburbs of a city of over 1.3 million people.

The previous government had a plan to change all of that. The government I was a member of, the Morrison government, developed with the then state Liberal government, the Marshall government, a vision for the Greater Adelaide Freight Bypass. That would have seen all that heavy freight I've just outlined leaving what's called the Southern Expressway before it goes through the Adelaide Hills—so around Monarto—and then travelling up around the back of the Adelaide Hills, rather than through suburban Adelaide, to connect with where most of that freight is looking to go: either to Port Adelaide or on to Port Augusta or Darwin or wherever. And obviously it would have worked in reverse when the freight was flowing in the opposite direction.

It makes a lot of sense, and it has been talked about for some time. We even, finally, in the last couple of years, thanks to the work of those two governments, saw all of the stakeholders, all of the industry groups and all of the local councils that would be on the new route come together and express their support for this project. We did all that work.

Then we announced and put funding in the budget for the Truro bypass, which is in the member for Barker's electorate. That is the first step in a series of projects that would see that bypass constructed. That was a very clear show of faith and show of commitment to this bypass—to getting this heavy freight out of suburban Adelaide—by the previous Morrison government and the state Liberal government.

To be fair to the state Labor government that was elected some two years ago, they kept the funding for their part of the deal in their budget. In fact, they delivered two budgets where the funding of the Marshall government was left in there by that new government. Until late last year, it seemed fanciful and farcical that, for a funded project—one which had the support of Infrastructure Australia and of Infrastructure South Australia, the state government's commensurate body; one which a state Labor government continued to remain committed to; one for which funding had been outlined years earlier and was in the forward estimates of budgets; and where the federal Labor government had gone to an election saying it was going to honour and to proceed with all of these projects that we had announced and, in this case, put funding into and secured funding for—just before Christmas, that funding would be ripped away.

Let's understand the significance of this project and the betrayal. I obviously speak for the interests of my electorate and how they are affected, but it impacts not just the electorate of Sturt. I mentioned that this project is actually in the member for Barker's electorate, and of course he is devastated at the impact on his community of seeing that this great opportunity to get freight out of the township of Truro has been defunded by the Albanese government. Indeed, it's not just members of the opposition. The member for Mayo—of course, an Independent member—who represents the Adelaide Hills, is just as passionate about getting these heavy trucks out of her electorate. There are literally deaths from this heavy freight at what's called the tollgate, which is in my electorate but it is actually on the route of all the commuters that are coming from the member for Mayo's electorate into and out of metropolitan Adelaide. That is a very dangerous part of the Adelaide metropolitan road network that would be transformed if all that heavy freight wasn't having to come down in low gear, constantly having issues with braking and, at times, running right through an extremely busy intersection.

Even the Labor member for Boothby has said—at least, at public meetings full of residents that are furious about this—that she's supportive of this and is going to talk to the minister and work on securing funding for it. Well, good luck. We look forward to seeing that happen, because you don't say one thing to your community and then do a different thing here in Canberra. At those meetings, these comments are made—and people record these meetings, evidently. The good thing is: there's no ambiguity, confusion or ability for someone to say, 'No, I didn't say that,' when it has been recorded. That's the very helpful thing about recording these public meetings.

So we wish the member for Boothby well on delivering on her commitment to get this project funded. But it would surprise me that the government would defund project a few months ago and then re-fund it, when, in the meantime, they've rubbished the project and had all sorts of disparaging things to say about it, months and months later. I hope that they have a conversion on the road to Damascus on this point. I fear that won't be the case, and, therefore, I'm very committed to fighting at the community level alongside colleagues like the member for Barker and the member for Mayo to make sure that we show just how furious the people of Adelaide—in fact, the people of South Australia—are about this disgraceful betrayal.

It is such a logical project that will deliver such significant productivity improvements to the Australian freight network. We're talking about investing in Highway 1. Like I say, the beneficiaries of investing in this are not just my constituents, who I prioritise. If you're sending heavy freight from Melbourne to Perth or vice versa, then there's a benefit from a productivity point of view for that freight. There are enormous road safety benefits to this. The Road Transport Association in South Australia warmly welcomed the broader concept of the bypass when it was funded and said that, despite the fact that the route is longer, there's a lot of sense and efficiency for the road transport sector in shifting off the carriageway through suburban Adelaide to instead go around the back of the Adelaide Hills. So it's a completely logical project, and it concerns us greatly that this comes against the backdrop of so many other broken promises, as I outlined earlier in my contribution.

It makes us start to wonder if we can take this government at their word on anything. I say that because, as we approach the next election, we're going to have all sorts of other things said by this government that fall into the category of promises like cutting electricity bills by $275, honouring stage 3 tax cuts or building the Truro bypass. The people of my electorate—like the people across this country—are quite reasonably going to wonder why they would believe anything they say. Why would this government expect the people of this country to believe anything they say? Now what we know is that, if this government goes to the next election making commitments to my electorate, to my home state or to all Australians, all that means is that it's something they will say before an election to get elected and then conveniently decide that they don't have to do after the election. It's a pretty fundamental part of our democracy. People should be expecting governments to honour commitments that they campaign on. They should expect that the promises they take to elections—just as in the case of this government—should be honoured when they are elected.

We're, potentially, on the cusp of a very frightening scenario around naval shipbuilding, which we're told about through all these leaks coming out of the defence department. It's good to see the defence department is leaking as consistently under this government as it was under the previous government. As per usual we read all this speculation—the softening of the ground for some major realignment of the surface shipbuilding program through the review that was commissioned by the government coming out of the Defence Strategic Review. Part of that review was to have another review. The review recommended by that review has been with the government for many months now, and apparently it is being announced next week. What I'll be looking for is to see whether the commitments that were made to my home state of South Australia on shipbuilding are honoured. There's a bit of a pattern here, isn't there? It seems like no matter what the commitment was—whether it's in defence, infrastructure, cost of living or tax—it all seems to change after an election. It all seems to be different. There are always very convenient weasel words that are put around these things.

At the end of the day, if that surface ship review sees a loss of continuous shipbuilding and jobs in my home state of South Australia, I promise you there will be hell to pay in the state of South Australia. And, if there's some kind of trickery, where they say, 'Look, what we're doing is just slightly scaling back the number of frigates, but then there are going to be these other vessels that we'll get to. You'll all still get continuous shipbuilding'—if there's any fraud like that, people just won't buy it. They will not buy it. We can already see that the South Australian Premier seems to have been given quiet advance notice of this bad news for South Australia so he can figure out his spin and lines and try and make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. He's already adjusting all his commentary in saying, 'The nine vessels isn't what's key; it's all about continuous shipbuilding.' I suspect there's going to be some kind of attempt to say, 'Look, we're doing six frigates and we're building some alternate vessels on top of that, and we're going to work through the detail of it all, but don't worry; it's all going to happen in South Australia'—just like they were going to build the Truro bypass and haven't, just like they were going to cut our power bills by $275 a year and haven't, and just like they were going to honour the stage 3 tax cuts and haven't.

When this comes up next week, if the leaks out of Defence in the media are true, we will watch for that and we will know what it really means if that's the announcement—that is, a breach of trust again with the people of South Australia and a broken promise by this government that goes to elections and says one thing and does another thing. When the people of South Australia and of my electorate of Sturt get the chance to adjudicate on that, I'm pretty confident what the message will be, loud and clear, at the ballot box.

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