Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal 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 inform the House how the coalition government is planning for Australia’s future infrastructure needs? What role have other levels of government played in this process?

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

I thank the member for Bonner for his question and recognise his interest in ensuring that an appropriate level of investment takes place in critical infrastructure in Australia, particularly for our all-important export industries and that includes in his electorate of Bonner in Brisbane. It has been identified that the national freight task in Australia is going to double by the year 2020 and that the nation needs to begin planning, preparing and investing to accommodate that freight task if we are to achieve the levels of growth that we have had in Australia in recent years. In the budget a couple of weeks ago, the Treasurer announced a further $22.3 billion for land transport infrastructure investment in Australia between 2009 and 2014. It takes our total investment in AusLink or our land transport infrastructure investment package to $38 billion. The level of investment that the Commonwealth government is making into infrastructure, both road and rail and in particular focusing on our export corridors, is unprecedented in Australia’s history.

Unfortunately, the state Labor governments in Australia are not matching this. They are trying to reap the benefits of the export boom in Australia at the moment—not just in the mining section but in other sectors as well—and they want to take the benefits of the export growth, but they do not want to reinvest in the infrastructure. If Australians really want to see what a future federal Labor government might do, they have only to look at the state Labor government in Queensland.

Again, I draw the House’s attention to media reports today about delays in getting coal exports out of Dalrymple Bay in Central Queensland. Unfortunately, we are starting to see comments about this by some of our very good customers. One in particular in today’s media was from a highly valued customer of coal and iron ore out of Australia, the South Korean steel producer POSCO. A representative from POSCO, Mr YT Kwon, said from Seoul yesterday that he was concerned the delays in getting coal out of Dalrymple Bay in Queensland were mostly due to Queensland Rail and its overly bureaucratic approach to a crisis that now threatens the jobs across the Bowen Basin coal district in the centre of the state. He said:

Frankly, Queensland is the very worst of our suppliers [throughout the world] right now.

That is a sad situation. We pride ourselves on the coal industry, particularly in Queensland and in New South Wales, and on our ability to supply our good customers. POSCO, in Korea, is one of our very best customers and has been for many years.

I had the opportunity of speaking at the Minerals Council of Australia conference this morning. Before I spoke, Mr Peter Coates, the chairman of the Minerals Council, gave a presentation on the current state of play as far as infrastructure was concerned. The comparison between Dalrymple Bay in Queensland and Port Waratah in Newcastle is interesting. The capacity of the port at Port Waratah in Newcastle is 102 million tonnes a year, yet the capacity of the rail line servicing Port Waratah is 112 million tonnes a year. Why is that so? It is because the Commonwealth government, through the ARTC, has taken over the running of that coal line. We are in the process of investing $360 million, and already we have increased the capacity so that the capacity of the rail line servicing the port is outstripping the port.

What is the situation at Dalrymple Bay in Queensland? The capacity of the port at Dalrymple Bay in Queensland is 60 million tonnes a year. In August last year the combined logistics operation—that is, the rail and the track operation, which is all Queensland Rail; nobody else can compete on rail in Queensland—served up 59 million tonnes of coal to the port. So the capacity of the rail logistics operation servicing the port was below the capacity of the port, but in May this year that dropped to 49 million tonnes. The port can manage 60 million tonnes but the rail operation, run by the Queensland government, can get only 49 million tonnes up to it.

This is clearly a case of a lack of planning of investment by the Queensland Labor government in Queensland infrastructure that is vital to exports not just out of Queensland but also out of Australia. This is impacting on the national interest. That is what goes on in Queensland. This is the state where the Leader of the Opposition claimed he cut his teeth as an economic manager. This is how it is run in Queensland. When the Leader of the Opposition was involved with the last Labor government in Queensland, under his leadership of the bureaucracy in Queensland, they closed 13 regional railway lines and three rail workshops and 457 jobs were lost. The Goss Labor government shut down small country schools and cut 403 teaching positions and they cut 600 jobs out of the department of primary industries and shut down four regional DPI offices. These were all decisions taken by the Goss Labor government in Queensland, where the Leader of the Opposition said he cut his teeth as an economic manager. This is the experience that the Leader of the Opposition claims to have that qualifies him to be the Prime Minister of Australia. The people of Australia should seriously question that.