John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

In July the Japanese ambassador to Australia, Yamagami Shingo, spoke at the National Press Club. Mr Yamagami is the most senior diplomat to hold the post of ambassador to Australia. His seniority reflects the importance of our relationship at a time of critical issues in the region, the same as those which have resulted in the formation of the Quad with India, Japan and the US. There is a clear need in all these countries to form even stronger bonds with our allies and trading partners. His speech was timed to coincide with the opening of the Olympic Games. Just as the Olympics are as much about opportunities as about sport, Mr Yamagami took the opportunity to spruik the great potential that could be unlocked if our countries worked more closely together. Mr Yamagami said that his dream was to partner with Australia to roll out a Shinkansen network in Australia. It will surprise no-one who has listened to me before that I found this a very exciting idea.

I have met with the ambassador on a number of occasions since his speech and he remains passionate about the possibilities. His passion comes from his experience living outside of the chaos and hubbub of Central Tokyo but still being able to commute there every day. Since committing to high-speed rail back in the 1970s Japan has seen its cities completely change, as overcrowding and extreme growth pressures have been averted by allowing people from further out to commute. These regional hubs have in turn seen huge levels of development and growth, so they are now cities and destinations in their own right. This is the purpose of high-speed rail—not simply the provision of transport between two destinations but, rather, the catalyst for a whole-scale reimagining of settlement, easing congestion, housing costs and growth pressures in our major cities whilst spreading prosperity to our regions.

It should be clear that this is the solution to the problems that we face here in Australia today. With no plan of settlement, we have a random unbalanced focus on Melbourne and Sydney, overwhelming their infrastructure capacity and strangling potential growth. Our two major cities take some 85 per cent of immigrants and suffer some of the highest house prices on the planet. Our major cities are coal-guzzling, high-emitting old cities. With no effective plan of decentralisation put in place, this problem will only worsen.

These are the same problems that Japan faced. Like them, we could use the solution to these problems as a way of jumpstarting our economy in these uncertain times and assist in our recovery. The creation of new, smart, zero-emission cities and commutable times from our major CBDs will create megaregions that will compete on the world stage as a launchpad and as destinations of significance. We can create affordable housing and stimulate faltering regions. We will be able to incentivise hubs of health or manufacturing as we redesign our new cities of the future. We can do all this while doing more for the environment than any other plan that has been put forward so far.

Recent years have seen the engine of economic growth moving out of cities and into megaregions, like the north-east of the United States and the Rhine corridor in Europe. High-speed rail between Newcastle and Melbourne, and eventually up to the Sunshine Coast, will create a megaregion that can compete globally against these other centres. While the academic and community will is there, getting political momentum is proving harder. It is clear that over the last few decades nothing at all has been done. In the last 40 years the government has spent over $135 million on inquiries into high-speed rail, yet not one track has been laid. The first problem is cost, but this isn't such a problem. Building this infrastructure will be expensive—that's undeniable—but, when you compare the low cost of regional land currently with the cost of land in Sydney and Melbourne, or the cost of land in comparable mega regions, it is clear that so great an uplift can fund the cost of the infrastructure many times over. We just have to find a way to capture this uplift and hypothecate it towards the cost of the infrastructure. The last two inquiries into high-speed rail that I have chaired found that high-speed rail has never been funded by the ticket price alone, but it is paid for by gaining a share of the uplift in properties impacted by this transformational infrastructure.

At this time the Victorian government has announced a rezoning impost of 50 per cent and New South Wales a similar proposed impost on uplifting resulting from rezoning or from infrastructure investment. This is the start of the funding, but, when aligned across borders and matched with federal commitments to include capital gains tax revenues in the equation, it becomes even more profitable. Further levies on hyperprofits like those seen at Badgerys Creek should also be captured. This should not be seen as the introduction of a tax. There is a clear justification for retrieving some of the gains that have been created only by investment of taxpayers' money. That the taxpayers should recoup some of their investment back from the multimillionaire landowners is only fair and should be electorally popular.

The other main reason it doesn't quite get up is the electoral cycle. Three-year terms incentivise small-scale projects that can be announced at one election and delivered by the next. Media bites can accompany each small stage, and the prevailing belief is that these give huge benefit to the electoral prospects of members. Pork-barrelling is par for the course in Australia and is clearly done openly by both sides of politics. But just because everybody does it doesn't mean it's right. I've stood next to enough pedestrian crossings and roundabouts to know that they don't bring much support and they almost never fix the root causes of the problems, which are generally to do with much larger structural issues and lack of planning. So the bread and butter of the political game is not what will make Australia great and allow us to fulfil our potential. National infrastructure on this scale is clearly well outside the interests of this small-scale electoral cycle. Planning settlement and building huge pieces of infrastructure are the work of decades, not three years, and long-term plans that remain constant are less attractive in a political climate that prioritises new announcements over large deliveries. This is probably why we haven't seen a new interstate passenger train line built for the best part of a century.

To break this cycle we need to have a policy that will withstand the changes of a fluid electoral system. We need a plan that is supported across the parliamentary aisle. Therefore I ask the question: when will people in this place put important issues above politics and cooperate with each other and agree on long-term master planning of settlement? When will we agree on the essential infrastructure and a sustainable funding system that makes demands of those lucky landowners who profit so extraordinarily through the investment of taxpayers and favourable rezoning? We must have master planning of settlement, master planning of infrastructure and master planning of funding, to master our future. So please let's stop butting heads and let's get those heads together to serve us better. Bipartisanship is not the end of this combative parliament. There will still be differences on how and when we roll out the plans and tweaks along the way, but we must let those issues be the things we debate, not whether or not we take up these great challenges that will make such a difference to us now and in the future. This is too important to ignore.