Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Transport and Regional Services. Would the Deputy Prime Minister outline to the House how the government’s investment in infrastructure will build future prosperity in regional Australia and, in particular, in my electorate of Maranoa? Are there any alternative policies?

Mark Vaile (Lyne, National Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Maranoa for his question. He would recognise the significant investment that we will be making in future to land transport infrastructure networks in Australia as a result of the budget announced this week. $22.3 billion has been committed over future years to the land transport system in Australia—roads and rail—for which we take responsibility. This is to be added to the $15.8 billion that we are currently spending in AusLink 1, a 41 per cent increase in investment into Australia’s land transport system. That is $38 billion that the Australian government is spending on the land transport system over a 10-year period.

The important part about this is that it is not just about a single strategy in respect of what used to be known as the national highway system, which we inherited from a former Labor government; it goes right across the networks of road and rail systems in Australia. There are those important national corridors, both road and rail, that are important freight links into our ports across Australia. There are state highways that we are now funding improvement projects on, in conjunction with the state governments where we can negotiate an appropriate contribution from them. There are investments in key arterial roads in regional Australia, some of which are in the member for Maranoa’s electorate—an important electorate that supplies a lot of agricultural product and also resources and energy from Queensland that has to get to the port.

There is also funding for local roads and local black spots. There are very good local road and local black spot programs, and also key rail freight infrastructure, where we have had to negotiate to take over corridors from some of the state governments to improve the efficiency of rail in Australia. In this program we want to ensure that our partners, the state and local governments, help share the costs and help share the risks to ensure that the taxpayers’ dollars are being wisely invested and that we get maximum advantage out of that. So it is not just the major highways; it is the local roads that improve the lot of all Australians as far as our land transport network is concerned. We have given a long-term commitment to that.

The member for Maranoa asked whether there were any alternatives. We have seen that really the answer to that is no—certainly not from the Labor Party. There are no alternatives from the Labor Party. In fact, the shadow Treasurer was asked on radio, after the budget came out:

Is there anything in this budget that you would take out?

He said:

No, not really.

He was saying, ‘We support it.’ No, really, he would not take anything out. So he is supporting the commitment that the government is making to the Australian land transport system. Then we saw a press release from the shadow minister, the member for Batman. The member for Batman had this to say:

... Auslink I must build on the investment of Auslink II—

that is our policy, AusLink 1, and our policy, AusLink 2—

in Australia’s strategic economic transport infrastructure.

I can assure the member for Batman that that will be the case. It will build on the investment we have already made. We will get the states to invest, we will get local government to invest and we will make sure that we have a national land transport system in Australia that continues to drive economic growth in this country so that we can see the sorts of job creation that we have experienced in recent years as a result of the reforms in Australia.

We welcome the Labor Party’s support for our land transport policy. We welcome their support. We have seen, in the last week or so, the outsourcing of a lot of Labor policy development. We have seen that the Labor Party has outsourced industrial relations policy and some of their preselections to the union movement. We have seen the outsourcing of budgetary and economic policy to the Democrats. They have got it right at last because they have outsourced their land transport policy to the coalition government.