Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to comment on the Infrastructure Australia Bill 2008. I think it is a good idea that a nation should begin to predict and anticipate its infrastructure needs and demands and set out a strategic blueprint. Why I am disappointed, though, is that this whole bill is couched as if climate change and oil depletion are not real. I do acknowledge that in the second reading speech on the bill there is one mention of climate change and that in the legislation itself as proposed there is reference to climate change, but it is not one of the primary functions of Infrastructure Australia. What concerns me is that we have legislation here which is effectively a megaphone for the roads lobby. That is really the only way that you can look at what we are talking about this evening.

What we already know is that our cities are choked and that urban congestion is a huge problem. However, the solution is proposed in terms of more freeways, more flyovers, more city tunnels and so on. Where is the recognition that oil is already above $100 a barrel? Where is the recognition that, in fact, it has been $110 a barrel and it has come back marginally? The Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics foolishly cling to the notion that oil is going to come back to $45 a barrel; I do not know of anybody else around the world who is of that view but they clearly are, and they are clearly advising government that it will not be a problem into the future. There is recognition in the government that it is an issue of the current account that Australia is increasingly lacking self-sufficiency in oil, yet there is no recognition in this legislation that, in planning the future, we should take it into account. In the strategic planning exercise, which is meant to look at the anticipation of infrastructure needs and demands, there is no anticipation that Australia will lose its self-sufficiency in oil.

There is a lot of talk about housing affordability; there is a lot of talk about equity; there is a lot of talk about energy poverty. But the reality is that the poorest people live the furthest out from the centre of the city, and they are most dependent on inefficient vehicles and have the least access to public transport. When fuel prices rise, those people do not have the discretionary income to be able to meet the fuel price rises, so they seek reductions in price. Whilst you might be able to do that with all manner of subsidies in the short term, the reality is that in the long term it is not effective.

What we have to be doing is looking at urban planning in the future which sees itself as central to a low-carbon economy—and that means a major investment in public transport and a major investment in mass transit not a major investment in more infrastructure in terms of freeways and more and more highways. It is very clear that we need to be upgrading the nation’s rail system—that we do need to get greater efficiency in those nodal points where rail meets road. Everybody understands that, and that is why I welcome the notion that we are moving to a strategic planning exercise. But I am concerned about the way this is being developed and the way this is being advocated for public consumption—it is those major private sector infrastructure organisations which are actually driving this; and the way it is going to be set up is to facilitate those people.

Already we have heard talk about the war on inflation, the need to invest in infrastructure and the infrastructure gap. But, if you have a look at who is out there telling us that there is this infrastructure gap, you see that it is Infrastructure Partnerships Australia. This is a consortium of major construction firms and banks led by former Kennett government minister Mark Birrell and endorsed by state premiers John Brumby and Morris Iemma. It has claimed that there is a $90 billion infrastructure gap and has published a state-by-state list of projects that it considers should be constructed. If they were to be constructed, the people who would construct them would be the very people putting forward the notion. What a surprise!

My concern here is that we have a recycling exercise going on where former state government ministers and premiers leave office, find their way to Macquarie Bank and other major infrastructure providers—particularly those keen on public-private partnerships—reintroduce the wish list they had as state transport ministers and state premiers through this mechanism and then get it recycled through AusLink. You only have to look at what happened at the last federal election: both the coalition and the Labor Party went around state by state promising road projects, overwhelmingly road projects, which were cherry-picked from the lists brought forward by state governments through the AusLink program. Nobody went back and actually had a look at those projects and said: ‘Was there a socioeconomic analysis of the need for the project? Was there a look at an alternative? Did anybody say there was an alternative to the latest flyway bypass? Was it possible that we could have a mass transit lane instead of yet another road project?’ The alternatives were not considered. The way that these projects were selected and prioritised was not considered. Even the economic viability of the projects was not looked at. Essentially both the coalition and the Labor Party got the AusLink priority lists for each state, cherry-picked what they thought they wanted to promise from those lists and then promised that in the federal election context.

My concern with this body is that what we are seeing now is a formalisation of that process without the required level of public scrutiny and without the context of climate change and oil depletion. I make the point on climate change because when you look at the list of functions you see that the primary functions are listed and then the additional functions are listed—and listed in the additional functions is taking account of climate change. That should be the absolute primary function if you are serious about a whole-of-government approach to reducing emissions; if you are serious about moving on from oil dependency and looking at the ways of moving people around that provide for a healthy environment and that actually provide for human health in terms of addressing the obesity crisis that we have. You need to actually encourage people to walk, encourage people to cycle and encourage people to take public transport. That gives you a healthier population and better air quality, and you get people moving around cities faster. It is much more cost efficient than putting more and more people in cars on more and more freeways. You build a new bridge or freeway and then there is a bottleneck, so you build a tunnel—then you build another interconnecting tunnel and on and on it goes.

Let us look at some examples from around the world. Mayor Ken Livingstone in London recognised that congestion was a major issue, so he introduced the congestion tax. He hypothecated the money to the provision of public transport. Now London is exemplary. You can stand in Piccadilly Circus in the centre of the city and you have hardly any private vehicles—you have the London taxis, the red buses and the occasional luxury vehicle. The improvement in air quality is terrific. The actual amenity in moving around London is better than it has ever been. Now he has introduced a further levy in terms of the congestion tax in order to discourage large vehicles that are fuel inefficient. That is the kind of move that you are seeing overseas when they look at strategic planning for the future. It is the same in the European Union. They now have very strict directives on vehicle fuel efficiency and on public transport. You are now seeing companies setting standards for their workforce to reduce dependence on the private vehicle. Yet here we still have no movement to get rid of the fringe tax benefit for private motor vehicle use. There is no indication from the government that they are about to move on that—which of itself would be an excellent reform because it would actually stop encouraging people to engage in greater car use and encourage them to look at something different.

In the past you had public scrutiny of large infrastructure projects. You had the development of policy proposals and alternatives. You had the cost-benefit analysis. You had planning acts to assess the net community benefit of any infrastructure project. You had the assessment of environmental effects. You had parliamentary committee scrutiny, you had a public consultation process, you had a Treasury assessment and then you went through the cabinet approval process. Now what we have is project lists generated by private firms and consortia. It is a closed government-consortium collaboration, and we have seen what has happened with that in New South Wales in particular and also in Victoria. The traditional merit assessment is nearly invisible, if it occurs at all. Most public environmental assessment is in retreat.

This climate of dwindling public scrutiny has allowed state road construction agencies to produce extensive lists of urban and rural freeway proposals which are given standing, as I said, in their inclusion in the AusLink funding programs, and we are now into the next projected period. The construction of urban freeways has been recognised as one of the major factors behind the rapid growth of car use in Australian cities since the 1970s, and yet we are set to do it all over again. We know that emissions from transport are the second-largest source of greenhouse pollution after energy generation. The Australian Greenhouse Office predicts that transport emissions will grow by 60 per cent on 1990 levels by 2020.

As the imperatives for action on climate change intensify, it is vital that there be stringent and transparent processes for the evaluation and public scrutiny of infrastructure projects that may be given Commonwealth support. It is essential that the membership of the Infrastructure Australia Advisory Council include expertise in assessing the impacts of major transport infrastructure projects in relation to the likely impact, positive or negative, on greenhouse gas emissions, on maintaining economic and social resilience in the face of rapidly increasing oil prices and peak oil, and containment of the physical footprint of transport infrastructure in the urban environment. There is nothing in setting up this particular body, Infrastructure Australia, that suggests to me that any of that public scrutiny, public interest alternatives and proper scrutiny of the economics is actually going to happen. There is a huge potential for conflict of interest, as is recognised in the bill. There are provisions that require disclosure. But once we have these public-private consortia getting together where they have a clear interest in building more infrastructure regardless of whether it is the best infrastructure opportunity in a carbon constrained world then we have got problems.

I will be moving a series of amendments when we move into the committee stage and I foreshadow those now. One will be to make consideration of greenhouse gas emissions and oil consumption implications of any development a primary function—not just an additional function but a primary function. There should be ministerial direction for this to be by legislative instrument and also there should be reference of the advice of Infrastructure Australia to the Joint Standing Committee on Public Works, so we actually get back to parliamentary scrutiny of what is being proposed in the public interest using public funds. Surely the people need the opportunity to actually test this, to make sure that the vested interests have not become so close to government that the best interests of the community are not taken into account. That is something that I think is absolutely critical to how we move forward on that. I will certainly be moving that amendment in the committee stage.

When I talk about parliamentary scrutiny and independent environmental and social impact assessment of the projects, we have to have an opportunity for alternative approaches, different groups and different financial or ownership structures than those that might be proposed by Infrastructure Australia. The community have to be given the chance to have their say and have the integrity of the appraisal process open for consideration. We have to have more than a rubber stamp, and what is being proposed is a rubber stamp. What we are going to see is no capacity for the parliament to actually refuse any of these projects. So you are going to have this nice little set-up between those with a vested interest in promoting and building new roads around Australia predominantly working with a few people in government and the minister rubber-stamping it without parliamentary scrutiny. I think that an effective parliamentary committee review of each major infrastructure project valued above $50 million should be mandatory. That is what I will be moving as an amendment. I think there should be reciprocal arrangements between the Commonwealth and the states so that if a project undergoes parliamentary scrutiny at one level of government there can be a joint assessment process so that it does not have to go through a double assessment. Nevertheless, where we are using public funds for major projects there needs to be parliamentary scrutiny.

The same goes for environmental and social impacts. I have said already that we have got the government talking about freeing up land around Melbourne to build cheap housing, without a commitment to make sure that that housing is energy efficient and without a commitment that that housing will be serviced by public transport. So all you are doing when you promote that kind of infrastructure development is condemning people who live in those properties to energy poverty into the future, because they are the people who will be least able to afford the increased energy bills that will come from the carbon price and they are the people who are least able to keep running their inefficient vehicles and will have no choices in terms of public transport. So I see a major flaw in this legislation. Yes, it is a good idea to have a strategic plan for Australia’s infrastructure; but it is not a good idea that the need for infrastructure or the infrastructure gap is allowed to be identified by the very people who have a vested interest in filling that gap and then that those people are actually on the board here with a view to promoting road projects. That is essentially what will occur.

There is talk in the second reading speech about water infrastructure and talk about energy infrastructure. For that you can read improvements to the shipping capacity and the port capacity to move more coal out of the Hunter Valley. Where does that take us in terms of strategic planning for Australia’s future? I would argue that if you see this country as an information and knowledge based economy, you would be using your Infrastructure Australia to start building and investing in the infrastructure that would deliver a knowledge based economy. I see the current proposal as saying we need more infrastructure to maintain our position as a resource based economy, to see if we can dig things up faster, cut things down faster and move them faster by road to the ports and get them on the ships to China to generate more emissions as quickly as possible whilst saying we are taking climate change into account.

I cannot see how Infrastructure Australia is taking climate change into account when there is no requirement to look at the greenhouse gas emissions of every infrastructure project that is being recommended, no requirement to look at alternatives and no requirement to look at oil usage and long-term capacity for Australia to meet its transport needs. What we are clearly lining up for here is more road infrastructure to be supported by coal to liquids.

We have had the minister, Martin Ferguson, saying recently that we need a major investment in coal to liquids. South Africa ran its transport fleet on liquefied coal. The Nazis did it in Germany during the war. The technology is well and truly known. But the greenhouse gas ramifications are also known, and the low emissions centre has said very clearly that the emissions from the tailpipe from coal to liquids are the same as conventional oil even if you succeed with 100 per cent carbon capture and storage.

My view is that it is a good idea to have strategic planning on infrastructure, but I am concerned that this does not go to the heart of it, which is a real strategic plan in the public interest. This looks like a strategic plan for those with vested interests who want to build more road infrastructure across Australia to the detriment of the national interest in the context of the transition to a low carbon economy. That is the context in which I will be moving amendments in the committee stages.