Steve Gibbons (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. How has the government’s economic stimulus advanced the modernisation of Australia’s freight rail network and how has this investment been received?

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

I thank the member for Bendigo for his question. In December last year, as part of the economic stimulus plan, we injected some $1.2 billion into the Australian Rail Track Corporation. That was to undertake some 17 rail projects right across the country, and they got underway very swiftly indeed—putting people to work, particularly in regional Australia. Two weeks ago I was in Seymour and I laid the last sleeper on the track upgrade between Albury and Seymour.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

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

I was well supervised! Funding announced last December, 225,000 concrete sleepers placed and 120 people employed in regional Victoria, as well as people employed in Wagga Wagga making the concrete sleepers—this was a $45 million project to not only create jobs today but also make the railway more efficient and increase productivity for the long term. The modernisation of our freight rail network will position us to come out of the global economic recession just that much stronger. The Leader of the Opposition said some five months ago that the stimulus:

… is not producing jobs, it’s not protecting jobs, and it certainly isn’t creating jobs.

He said that the Prime Minister:

… hasn’t been able to demonstrate that it’s created one job …

Well, I met the 120 workers who worked on that site at Seymour—who had been given employment and training, who had been given opportunities and who then were going on to other activity with the ARTC on that day. I wonder what they think about the Leader of the Opposition’s comments. Three months ago, when the Treasurer and I were in South Australia in the electorate of Kingston looking at the new railway line extension there from Willunga to Seaford, the Leader of the Opposition was in Adelaide too, questioning again our stimulus projects. He said there:

… everything will have to be reviewed. There’s no question about that.

He was questioning the economic stimulus package of this government. For months we have had the argument that the stimulus was not creating jobs and that it was too large. So I was interested this morning when in his doorstop interview the Leader of the Opposition said, when it comes to infrastructure:

… when you look at it closely you see that the Rudd government is committed to spending really no more than the Coalition was committed to spending.

So we are spending too much, the economic stimulus plan should be wound back and yet we are not spending any more than they were going to spend. The fact is that we are investing more in rail in 12 months than those opposite did in 12 years. The Leader of the Opposition simply cannot make up his mind. Is the stimulus too large? Should it be wound back? Or is it there at all? We do not know—depending upon the comments of the opposition. What is very clear is that the Leader of the Opposition has no judgment when it comes to politics, has no judgment when it comes to policy and, most importantly, has no judgment when it comes to people.