Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

Getting the right advice on infrastructure development is essential to maximise value for public investment and encourage private sector activity. Infrastructure is a key to future productivity growth, future jobs growth and a better quality of life for all Australians. It is therefore critical that Infrastructure Australia, the independent adviser to government, be allowed to retain its independence and be able to publish its impartial findings about the infrastructure needs of the country.

The Infrastructure Australia Amendment Bill will compromise Infrastructure Australia's independence. This bill should be withdrawn. It is an affront to the important concepts of evidence-based decision making and transparency. It has been roundly criticised by experts whose motive in offering criticism is not political but based purely on what they know about Infrastructure Australia and the broad infrastructure investment scene in this country. No less an organisation than the Business Council of Australia, representing the nation's biggest companies, has criticised this bill as an attack on Infrastructure Australia's independence. The Urban Development Association of Australia is also concerned. These people are not politicians; they are experts. We need a debate about why it is that the Abbott government wants to undermine Infrastructure Australia.

My motion today proposes that the Infrastructure Australia Amendment Bill 2013 be withdrawn and be referred to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications. I propose this because when the Minister for Infrastructure introduced this bill he assured the House that it would strengthen Infrastructure Australia. This is clearly untrue. This bill was gagged through the House of Representatives even though it was not due to be considered until after a Senate inquiry in March. There are at least two areas where the amendments to the operation of Infrastructure Australia will be severely compromised by this bill. The fact is that Infrastructure Australia has a critical role which will be undermined if this bill is passed.

Infrastructure Australia was created by Labor in 2008. Its design was specifically focused on independence, because Labor wanted to disconnect the infrastructure investment cycle—which is necessarily long term—from the short-term political cycle. IA conducted an audit of the nation's infrastructure needs and created an infrastructure investment priority list based on the potential for a project to contribute to lifting national productivity. Importantly, it took away the piecemeal approach of examining a single project in isolation. It recognised the need for integrated approaches and released a national ports strategy, a national land freight strategy and, more recently, a national urban transport strategy.

Infrastructure Australia's recommendations were based on cold, hard facts—excluding political considerations. Any government interest in boosting productivity, and thereby opening the way for jobs growth, will be well served by following its recommendations. That is why the former Labor government funded all 15 out of 15 of the top IA recommendations for major investments. We did not pick and choose according to the electoral map; we used productivity gains as our yardstick.

This current bill will undermine the IA's independence. Firstly, the Minister for Infrastructure wants to order Infrastructure Australia about what it can and cannot research. In particular, the changes allow the minister to order IA to exclude complete classes of investment from its research considerations. This fails to understand that, when you look at transport infrastructure, you need to look at the relationship between passenger and freight, as well as the relationship between rail and road. You need to look at the way that the cities and regions function in order to get the right outcomes. This is retrospectively attempting to justify the stripping of billions of dollars from projects like the Melbourne Metro and the Cross River Rail project, both of which have been recommended by Infrastructure Australia. It is also aimed at justifying the removal of $500 million that has been allocated for Western Australian public transport projects, both in terms of light rail and also heavy rail to the airport. This move will undermine the very functioning of Infrastructure Australia.

A second change, which is just as serious, would allow the minister to prohibit Infrastructure Australia from publishing its findings. Transparency is absolutely critical. At the moment, Infrastructure Australia publishes that information. It is therefore critical that the transparent operation of Infrastructure Australia be defended. It is one of the statements that was made by the Business Council of Australia, who said in their submission to the bill:

The submission continues:

Further:

It is clear that the Business Council of Australia submission, as well as the other submissions—including Infrastructure Partnerships Australia and, indeed, the submission from the Infrastructure Australia coordinator himself—shows that they are on to what the government is aiming to do here, which is to go back to the old pork-barrelling provisions, whereby you have decisions made without proper analysis. We can see this happening in the way that funding is being allocated in Melbourne by this government, which it has foreshadowed without proper cost-benefit analysis.

It is not just the BCA; the UDIA said it:

This is absolutely critical and on Friday the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee heard further concerns from Infrastructure Partnerships and the Moving People 2030 Task Force. Departmental representatives at that hearing seemed unclear as to the operation of the bill.

Last month the Treasurer played host to the G20 finance ministers in Sydney. During that meeting he strongly emphasised the need for infrastructure investment to drive global economic growth. In that objective he was right, but that is completely undermined by this legislation that was rammed through the House without proper consideration. It undermines the very reason Infrastructure Australia was established. Infrastructure Australia was established to have proper analysis of integrated plans for the way that cities, regions and the entire nation functions. Infrastructure Australia has been an enormous success that is being undermined by those promoting this change. Infrastructure Australia was a part of the creation of the new infrastructure department, and my appointment as Australia's first ever infrastructure minister was a recognition that you need integrated plans because there are interrelationships between transport, energy, water and communications, and you need a body which is able to examine those issues.

The Treasurer was right at the G20, but it is hard to believe his sincerity when the government of which he is a part is dismantling the existing evidence-based system for making decisions about infrastructure investment. It is time to stop the charade and go back to the drawing board via a full inquiry by the House of Representatives committee. That would enable proper analysis and proper input from the business and research communities to ensure that we get the right outcomes through proper legislation, and if amendments that are of merit need to be considered the opposition is certainly prepared to do that. What we are not prepared to do is exclude entire classes of transport or infrastructure developments and remove the transparency provisions that are currently there in the Infrastructure Australia legislation. I commend the motion to the House.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I listened to the shadow minister and member for Grayndler with great interest. Part (1)(b)(i) of his motion says that the investment infrastructure makes a vital contribution to economic growth. Yes, we agree with that. It says there is broad support in the House for:

Of course, we all agree with those words but it is worthwhile having a look at what happened over the previous six years and then understanding the reason why we need this change. The first exhibit I will give is the train wreck of the NBN. So far, we have seen after six years of promises just a three per cent rollout. That has cost the taxpayer $7 billion. This is a project that is hopelessly behind schedule and hopelessly over budget. This was a project with the biggest infrastructure spend we had seen under the previous Labor government, and yet it did not have any of the required cost-benefit analysis that we have talked about. It did not have any of the transparency that the former minister talked about. The NBN is the greatest example of why the Infrastructure Australia Amendment Bill is needed and why this motion should be rejected. One of the great reasons the so-called experts put forward for having an NBN was that we were going to become a gigabit nation. A press release from 19 April says:

Can you guess how many end-users in fact connected to this so-called 'gigabit nation'? The answer is zero: not one single customer took up the offering of the NBN. We were told that it was important that the NBN be rolled out so that the connection speed could go to 250 megabits. But can you guess how many customers have signed up for the NBN's 250 megabits? The answer is one: one single customer.

A further example of the former government's infrastructure problems is the great Epping-to-Parramatta rail link. It was promised in 2010 with great hoopla and publicity, but it was never among the national infrastructure priorities. It was simply an example of pork-barrelling: the former Labor government's rolling out a project for political ends and not for the sake of what the country needs.

We only have to look at what the Australian National Audit Office said about Labor's infrastructure expenditure. In 2010 its report found that Labor had handed $2.2 billion in taxpayers' funds to eight infrastructure projects which its own advisers had questioned as economically unviable or not ready to proceed. This is what happened under the previous Labor government. But do not take my word for it; take the word of Lindsay Tanner, the former finance minister, who attacked his former colleagues and said that they were ignoring the national interest and handing out infrastructure spending irrespective of merit, for political rather than economic gain. Such are the reasons that change is needed.

Another great example of the former government's problems with infrastructure is the Moorebank Intermodal project. Treasury and Infrastructure Australia criticised the former Labor government's plans. They said that the private sector was organised and ready to start but that the former government knew better and wanted to do it itself using public money rather than private money. The government's analysis of the project was completely flawed in many ways. I will go through a few of them in the time left.

Firstly, the government's analysis completely overestimated the growth in the number of containers in Sydney. Between the years 2000 and 2008 there was a very large increase—around eight per cent per annum—in the number of containers in Sydney, and the former Labor government forecast that the same rate of growth would go on forever. But that is not what has happened; the forecast growth has not occurred. There are many reasons for this. One is that the goods that people are buying are becoming smaller. Take books—many people are now buying online books rather than traditional books. Look at how computers are decreasing in size. Compare the size of a flat-screen TV to the old-fashioned-style TV. Many of the goods we are buying are coming down in size. But this was not thought through by the previous government, so they panicked and said, 'We need an intermodal terminal in Western Sydney.'

Secondly, the intermodal concept itself is flawed. The concept is that you put on rail a container which arrives at the port in Sydney, and you take it out to Western Sydney and distribute it from there. I often hear the former minister say that the intermodal project would take trucks off the road. That would be true if the containers ended up in a great big hole where the intermodal terminal was, but the fact is that the goods in the containers would end up going by road anyway unless there were a rail siding next to each of the warehouses where the containers were being unloaded. So an intermodal terminal would not remove trucks from the roads; at best it could reduce the distances that a truck needed to travel by road. That is why it is very important to do an analysis of where the containers would end up before the goods in them were distributed. Guess what? In the former government's analysis, this simply has not been done. What we heard from the former minister was how wonderful all of Labor's plans were, but no analysis was done of where those containers actually go today. I have arranged for that analysis to be done; if we look at it, the market has simply rejected the Liverpool and Moorebank area as a point to distribute containers.

If we look at the map, the majority of Sydney's containers go to the Eastern Creek area. There are 890 TEU movements from that Eastern Creek area, and that is 25 kilometres from where this Moorebank intermodal is going to be located. So why wouldn't you locate—if you are having an intermodal in Western Sydney, you need to have it located where the containers actually end up. There is no point putting it on a rail link, only to have to unload it there and still truck it 25 kilometres away. But, unfortunately, that is what this plan from the previous Labor government does. We also have the Enfield intermodal opening up in the coming months. It will capture anything inland back to the coast from Moorebank. So the whole area around Moorebank has been rejected by the market, and the reason it has been rejected by the market is simply because it is a bad location to distribute containers from. We have the Copeland Road section of the Hume Highway in Liverpool—one of the worst black spots in the country, as identified by the NRMA.

The other thing the previous government failed to do with their infrastructure planning is to look at where the containers need to go tomorrow. And if you look at the plans for Sydney, we have a Western Sydney area of economic development: we have an economic zone there, we have an area of development to the south, an area of development to the north. There are 500,000 residences aimed to go in that area—that is almost half the size of Brisbane—with Badgerys Creek in the middle. If we are going to build an intermodal, the ideal spot in Western Sydney is Badgerys Creek, but unfortunately the previous government's plans never even looked at that.

One of the other real concerns I have is their analysis of the pollution, which was another thing that was done very poorly. Yes, when we put a container on rail rather than road, we burn less diesel fuel. The problem is that when we burn that diesel fuel in the existing locomotives, the particulate matter that those diesel trains spew out, as compared to a modern truck, is actually five to 10 to almost 20 times greater. So we are not going to reduce pollution; this will increase the amount of particulate pollution in Western Sydney, and particulate pollution is the pollution that kills. Overall, it is very important—the previous government's analysis of infrastructure spending was neither transparent nor independent. That is why the change is needed, and that is what this change will do. That is why this motion should be rejected, and the bill should be passed. (Time expired)

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is always a pleasure to follow the member for Hughes, and it was particularly useful for me to listen to his contribution to this debate, and—

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Listen and learn, listen and learn!

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I did do a bit of learning; I have learnt a lot about Sydney's intermodal freight needs. But before the member for Hughes turned to that matter, he went through a number of examples with which he found fault going to the previous government's management of significant infrastructure projects. While I do not agree with the conclusions he drew, it is hard to understand that contribution as being anything other than a contribution in support of the principles underpinning this motion—that is, the call for a greater degree of transparency and more evidence as the basis in the rollout of significant infrastructure projects; the call for the principles set out in the member for Grayndler's motion.

Moving on to that motion, I am always grateful for any opportunity to speak on infrastructure provision, and I am particularly grateful to be able to support this important motion moved by the member for Grayndler. I am passionate about infrastructure, and to this extent I am pleased that our Prime Minister wishes to be known as the 'infrastructure Prime Minister', although this does seem to be something of a vain hope with regard to his form. This is a government that says one thing and then does another, and that is clearly demonstrated at the heart of this debate by its rhetorical claim going to the bill that is the subject of this motion—that is, the claim that it would strengthen Infrastructure Australia when its entire concept is to do the reverse. Labor is the party of nation building; it is what we do. From the Fisher government and the aged care pension through to Medicare, through to superannuation and, indeed, the National Broadband Network.

On the National Broadband Network, we are the party of infrastructure, the party of building the future—investing and improving the circumstances in which people work and live their lives; through building a stronger and more productive national economy. Labor in government turned around infrastructure neglect. We were 20th of the 25 OECD nations in terms of infrastructure investment when we came to government in 2007, the government preceding us being one in which our current Prime Minister was a senior minister, along with the Deputy Prime Minister, the now Minister for Infrastructure—but perhaps more on his contribution later. We are now first on the list of infrastructure investment, but sadly it seems not for long. As Paul Keating said:

When you change the government, you change the country

In terms of major infrastructure decision making this is perhaps doubly true. These changes will have a lasting impact. So much for the concerns expressed for intergenerational equity by members opposite, especially for those who live in our major cities and their outer suburbs. On the other hand Labor has shown itself to be committed to an evidence based approach to shaping how we will live and work—more productively, more sustainably—and to building stronger communities. For these purposes Labor, when they were in government, established Infrastructure Australia as a major priority, and supported this body. Under Minister Albanese, the member for Grayndler—a minister committed to the infrastructure agenda—we did not just get Infrastructure Australia to audit our infrastructure needs; we funded those projects. We listened to the experts, or the 'so called experts' in the words of the member for Hughes, and then responded.

On the other hand, our current Prime Minister wrote in his book Battlelines of 'kings in their cars'. This perhaps sums up this governments approach to this debate, a triumph of the 'I reckon' school of public policy making—working hand in hand with its two coalition parties; the ideologically blinkered who simply cannot abide public transport; and the National Party, the party that brought us the regional rorts. This is a world view of haves and have-nots, for there to be kings in their cars there must also be serfs; those in public transport it appears are condemned to be second-class citizens.

Since the last election things have changed for the worse. I refer members opposite to the abolition of the Major Cities Unit, and the apparent end of the National Urban Policy Forum—I say apparent, because we do not know the future of this important body. This is not only a government that is allergic to independent expert advice but one that was addicted to secrecy. This debate today brings these two unfortunate traits together. It was timely that I received Infrastructure Australia's Urban transport strategy document in the mail last week; and I hope members opposite have read it carefully, including the member for Corangamite. It sets out well the challenges of an urban transport infrastructure strategy, as well as reminding us of the reason for increases in public transport patronage, and concerns in transport equity, it states that we must:

If only. I remind members opposite of the Melbourne Metro project, so important that people right across the city are crying out for increased capacity in our rail network, including patrons on the South Morang and Hurstbridge lines. There is a better way. (Time expired)

Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Infrastructure Australia Amendment Bill will strengthen the role of Infrastructure Australia. It will make Infrastructure Australia independent and transparent, and these are important principles of government about which Labor should be concerned—and clearly we are seeing Labor is not concerned. It is disappointing that the member for Grayndler, in moving this motion, cannot see the wood from the trees when it comes to these important principles.

Infrastructure Australia's current governance structure inhibits its independence in their advice to governments. The direct line of reporting, between the Infrastructure Coordinator and the minister, places significant power in the hands of one person, rather than the Infrastructure Australia Council. Infrastructure Australia was largely answerable to one person, the former infrastructure minister, the member for Grayndler. No wonder he is opposing these changes. Reshaping Infrastructure Australia as an independent statutory authority, governed by a board, with a CEO who reports to the board, enhances the governance of this organisation. The proposal by the member for Grayndler that this bill be referred to a House of Representatives standing committee is futile and obstructive. As the member should know, the bill is already before the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport, which is due to report on 17 March.

Our bill also ensures that infrastructure projects are prioritised according to their capacity to contribute to improved productivity. This is so important for our nation and this is one element of our changes which is advancing the cause of the national interest. As the Deputy Prime Minister pointed out just this week, Labor's road and rail funding projects, its wasteful response to the global financial crisis and its infrastructure election promises were all announced without being fully assessed by Infrastructure Australia. Labor completely sidelined proper process. It made a mockery of the organisation that it itself established. We heard from the member for Scullin on the NBN, a $78 billion white elephant which has become an absolute basket case under Labor. And guess what: one of our biggest infrastructure projects in this nation was never referred to Infrastructure Australia.

Our focus on economic growth and productivity is critical. This helps our cities and regions to grow and prosper. Yes, the Prime Minister is proudly 'Australia's infrastructure Prime Minister'. In my electorate there is a powerhouse of major infrastructure projects underway, in partnership with the Victorian government. There is the $171 million duplication of the Princes Highway between Waurn Ponds and Winchelsea. The planning is underway, and we have brought forward some money in the budget for the $515 million duplication of the next section of this road, from Winchelsea to Colac. Work on the $4.8 billion regional rail link is well underway, and that is going to be a great boon for commuters in my region, in Geelong.

Of course, there are two critical infrastructure projects in my region which Labor is very unfortunately opposing. The first is our $50 million upgrade of the Great Ocean Road—an iconic road that is so critical for jobs, for tourism and for our regional economy. This road is the centrepiece of our regional tourism industry, which is contributing $2.1 billion to the Australian economy, something that Labor does not seem to be too concerned about. We are proudly starting to deliver on this project. The other critical project for our region is the East West Link. Our government has committed $1.5 billion. Stage 1 of this project will create more than 3,200 jobs during construction and, for the several thousand people of my electorate who commute to Melbourne each day, this will put an end to the highway that becomes a car park in many places during peak hour. It is another critically important infrastructure project for our region.

Our government is proudly delivering $342 million in the Community Development Grants Program and we are rolling out our National Stronger Regions Fund—$200 million a year for five years. This shows an unbelievable commitment to the regions, particularly in relation to community infrastructure. We are very proud of our commitments to infrastructure.

Debate adjourned.