Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for the question, Senator Payne. It is a good question. One of the things that the Labor government made clear during the election campaign—and have made a priority since coming to office—is trying to deal with those infrastructure and transport bottlenecks in society. Under the previous Howard government, we failed to invest in skills, we failed to invest in infrastructure and we failed to invest in our education system. As a result, the economic opportunities in Australia are limited by that failure to invest over the 11 years of the Howard government. What we have got now is a five-point plan to tackle inflation. It includes building our infrastructure, building our skills base and building the capacity of the economy. I know from talking with business around Australia that their frustration with the previous Howard government was that there was none of that investment occurring—none of that nation building which would allow them to take advantage of those opportunities. You only have to look at the ports around Australia, where there were ships banked up. There was no investment in rail infrastructure, no investment in roads and no investment in skills. As a result of that lack of investment, we are missing out on opportunities, and that is why we have got the inflationary pressures that we have got now.

The Labor Party will be investing in infrastructure. We have announced our plans for that infrastructure investment. We have made enormous efforts already to try to build Australian investment in infrastructure. That will allow us to expand the economy to provide greater economic opportunities for Australians and for Australian companies, and to continue to build the economic future of Australia. It is infrastructure and it is skills. As part of that, there will need to be more housing available as the population grows and as we use more overseas workers to help build the Australian economy. That does put pressure on housing. That is why I made the point earlier. The Labor Party and the Labor government have appointed a Minister for Housing—a position not used in the previous Liberal government. Ms Plibersek has set about a concerted plan to address the housing needs of this country. They include the First Home Saver Accounts, and the new Housing Affordability Fund, which will streamline local government development assessments, as part of our plan to cut infrastructure costs and reduce planning delays. There is a National Rental Affordability Scheme, encouraging private sector investment in affordable rental properties. There are issues to do with land release: our plans to release surplus Commonwealth land, and the establishment of a National Housing Supply Research Council to forecast future housing needs.

All of those policies are directed at overcoming the failures of the previous government to invest in the economic potential of this country—be it in infrastructure, be it in skills or be it in housing—that allow us to grow the economy, to tackle the bottlenecks in this economy and to provide opportunities for young Australians to own their own homes. Infrastructure is at the front of the Labor government’s agenda because it is obvious to us that the failure to invest in infrastructure under the previous government has reduced the capacity of this economy to grow. We are getting a great deal of support from business for that investment in infrastructure, to allow us to grow the Australian economy.