John Anderson (Gwydir, 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. Will the Deputy Prime Minister inform the House how the coalition government’s investment in rail is boosting and will further boost productivity in the Australian economy, particularly in regional Australia and in my electorate of Gwydir?

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

I thank the member for Gwydir for his question. It is self-evident that the member for Gwydir has a great deal of interest in this issue, given that one of the recent announcements that we have made with regard to developing our strategy on rail infrastructure in the future resulted from a report from a study that was instigated by the member for Gwydir when he was the Deputy Prime Minister and the minister for transport. I refer to the Ernst & Young study that was done on the north-south rail corridor between Melbourne and Brisbane. Last week I announced $15 million in funding to commission the next stage of this process, which is an engineering and scoping study to move the planning of this proposal forward so that it can be tested in the marketplace.

We have maintained at every point that we would expect private sector investment to fund significantly the development of this inland rail corridor, but it is all about increasing our competitiveness and improving productivity in Australia. You need to continue to invest in much-needed infrastructure across the country to continue increasing competitiveness and productivity.

The member for Gwydir would also be cognisant of the latest statistics in terms of the efficiency of one of the key coal rail corridors in Australia, following federal government investment in that corridor. I refer to the Hunter Valley coal line, where we see that the capacity of the coal line, as a result of our investment, is now ahead of the capacity of the port to be able to move that coal onto ships. It is only because of the investment of the Commonwealth government into that coal line, which we are managing through the ARTC, that that is happening. I draw to the House’s attention the fact that it is not happening in Queensland, where the Queensland government is not investing.

Investments like these mean that we can improve our efficiency in this area. One thing that the Ernst & Young study did identify and highlight was that the freight task in Australia is going to double by 2020 and, unless we match that with the appropriate level of investment in infrastructure, it will have a detrimental impact on productivity. So we need to ensure that investment keeps pace with that growth in demand.

The other positive aspects of this are the job creation opportunities that will be generated in electorates like that of the member for Gwydir, when construction takes place and the operation and servicing of a key transport linkage is implemented. That was also highlighted in the OECD report referred to by the Treasurer and the Prime Minister. That report confirms that employment growth in Australia is among the best in the industrialised world. Of the 29 most developed economies in the world, Australia is leading the way in terms of employment growth. This only happens through investment in infrastructure. We continue to get productivity growth only as a result of investment in infrastructure—like the inland rail proposal, like the investment we have in the coal line in the Hunter Valley that I have referred to, like the $22 billion we propose to invest in Australia’s land transport program beyond 2009 and like the $1.8 billion that will be invested in communications infrastructure in regional Australia.

The Leader of the Opposition should take a bit of notice of some of this. I know that he has been treading water a little in this debate about productivity. Maybe it highlights—if we go back to a comment that was made by him on the John Laws program in April—what his view is of normal levels of unemployment—and we have a particular view about unemployment on this side of the House. But he said to John Laws in that interview, ‘Well, normal in the sense that it will be higher levels of unemployment rather than lower levels of unemployment in the future if the demand particularly out of China eases.’ That is the point he makes. He will accept that unemployment is going to go up. Maybe that underpins his view of improving productivity: that he will generate more unemployment so that the productivity statistics improve—take 2.1 million Australians out of the workforce that we put into the workforce.

On this side of the House, we believe in investing in infrastructure to drive long-term productivity. We believe in creating jobs to drive long-term productivity. We do not believe in normalised levels of higher unemployment; we believe in normalised levels of lower unemployment—and that is the stark difference between the coalition government and a Labor opposition.