Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. What action has the government taken to boost private investment in infrastructure?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Dobell for his question and his ongoing interest in infrastructure, particularly on the Central Coast. On Saturday, COAG endorsed the national public-private partnership policy and guidelines that have been developed through the COAG Infrastructure Working Group and through Infrastructure Australia. Best practice nationally consistent PPP guidelines can save governments and industry more time and money and make the Australian infrastructure market more attractive to foreign investors. This is what the peak industry body, Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, chaired by Mark Birrell, had to say about these guidelines:

COAG’s adoption today of the new PPP guidelines will be welcomed by industry and means that, for the first time, Australia has a consistent method to assess the best option to deliver major infrastructure projects …

The adoption of these new national guidelines therefore marks an important step in the ongoing reform of Australia’s infrastructure marketplace.

This action is good for competition, good for the economy and, at the end of the day, good for taxpayers. There is no doubt that we had to take action after 12 years of infrastructure neglect from those opposite. It took them some five years to amend section 51AD and division 16D of the Income Tax Assessment Act, even after they were advised that this was actually a disincentive to private investment in infrastructure.

The Rudd government has acknowledged from day one that, whilst we are prepared to lift public investment in infrastructure, we also want to mobilise capital from the private sector. In particular, we have looked towards the superannuation industry, where there are good long-term returns. Using super as infrastructure investment capital makes sense, but up until recently this was opposed by those opposite. Indeed, the former shadow minister for infrastructure, the member for Wide Bay, was cautioning against this when we made announcements in February. This is what he had to say:

There is $1 trillion in those funds at the present, but it is there for a particular purpose. Now we can’t ask those funds to spend money on projects—roads, dams, whatever it might be.

I was surprised to hear the shadow minister for infrastructure—the new one—yesterday discover the idea of superannuation going into infrastructure. They did nothing about it for 12 years, made no policy changes and were hostile to any reform, but yesterday the shadow minister for infrastructure said that he wanted to look at ‘removing the roadblocks to superannuation funds in Australia investing here’. I note that it appears in the Age today. It is a pity it was on the front page of the Age a month ago, when the government had meetings with the superannuation industry about this very issue.

But it seems that plagiarism is contagious on that side of the House. They are catching it along their front bench. They are adopting Labor’s policy then seeking to undermine it. Our reform agenda on infrastructure speaks for itself. We are the first government to engage not just the Commonwealth and state governments through the COAG process but also the private sector directly through Infrastructure Australia—a reform opposed by those opposite, a reform opposed month after month. We will see how they vote this afternoon on the government’s Nation-building Funds Bill. We will see how they vote and whether they support the reform agenda that is being put forward by this government, which is committed to nation building.