Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was very interested to hear that Senator Ludlam is basically running the argument that Australians' right to drive their cars in whatever part of Australia they like should be examined very closely to be efficient—I think he does not give credit to the drivers of those cars, because they always look at the efficiency of their means of transport—and that choosing a three or four-bedroom house on the outskirts of a city at the time of your working life because that is what you can afford is something that also may need to be reviewed. Interestingly enough, the city of Adelaide does have some of the proposals that Senator Ludlam has suggested on the books. If you had talked to the Deputy Premier of South Australia as late as last week, he would be able to point you to the vigorous opposition to not multistorey but four- or five-storey planning approvals on major arterial roads—the same principle of infilling the city and infilling the major arterial roads with higher density housing. And it has been vigorously disputed by at least one council. The complaint people have is that there is nowhere to park the car. It is going to be a very long and arduous debate to take Senator Ludlam's position and carry it off.

I suppose it is important that we place on the record what the Labor government is doing in addressing the challenges of our city. I am fortunate enough to live in a city which is still easy to get around. Even in the alleged peak hours, we are probably no more than 20 minutes point to point for almost anywhere you want to go. That sort of ease of transport in Adelaide is not likely to bring any urgent change, but it is very important that we have a federal Labor government which since 2007 has placed the plight of 18 major cities on the national agenda. It is also important to place on the record that the previous coalition government, in keeping with coalition governments of the past, abandoned programs to improve our cities, such as the Hawke-Keating $2.3 billion Building Better Cities Program.

Our cities are home to seven out of 10 Australians and generate 80 per cent of the national income. This Labor government believes cities are too important to ignore. That is why, after national consultation, this federal government introduced Our Cities, Our Future, a national urban policy for a productive, sustainable and livable future, in May 2011. That is why we established a Major Cities Unit. The aim of the urban policy is to keep our cities globally competitive, productive, sustainable and livable.

Through a COAG agreement, state and territory leaders have been required to produce long-term strategic planning systems for their capital cities, taking into account a range of criteria, including: preservation of the transport corridors needed for the future, preparing for population growth and demographic change, planned evidence-based land release and an appropriate balance of infill and greenfield developments, climate change mitigation, better urban development and environmental management of water, energy and waste. This Labor government is very visible and active on all of those fronts.

Infrastructure funding under the Nation Building Program is linked to progress with these strategic city plans. So Senator Ludlam was on the right mark; he has Buckley's and none of having the reforms he is mooting being supported by a popular vote, but is important that this Labor government is proceeding in a sensible, thorough and strategic way to achieve what can be some remarkable outcomes, in a cooperative and proactive way.

In their 12 years in government, those opposite did not contribute one cent to a single public transport project, anywhere in Australia. In Melbourne's western suburbs, work is well underway on the Regional Rail Link. This is currently the biggest public transport project anywhere in the country, with the federal government contributing more than $3.2 billion towards its construction. In addition, this government has: invested $20 million through the Liveable Cities program for a raft of planning and demonstration projects directly improving our urban centres, transport links, cycling and walking paths and urban energy programs; produced three editions of the State of Australian cities, a national snapshot of our 18 major cities, fully downloaded more than two million times; established a national urban policy forum of experts to provide the best advice to government and to ensure that we get the policies right; contributed $58 million to two cooperative research centres, the CRC for Low Carbon Living and the CRC for Water Sensitive Cities; and launched an urban design protocol, providing a simple design guide and check sheet for governments and organisations. The list goes on and on.

Some of the commitments that have been made in public transport are: Victorian Regional Rail Link, $3.225 billion; Moreton Bay Rail Link, $742 million; Gold Coast Light Rail, $365 million; Noarlunga to Seaford Rail Extension, $291 million; Melbourne Metro One, pre-con, $40 million; Brisbane Inner City Rail Study, $20 million; and the Perth Light Rail Study. So the government is proactive along the lines of making sure that major cities provide long-term sustainable public transport. Where it is practical, possible and efficient, rail has been funded.

I think it is really important to move quickly to another really great initiative of this government, the NBN. What may well happen in a lot of our major cities is that people may choose to work from home. If you are going to choose to work from home, you are going to need high-speed, high-upload, high-download connection. Guess what? That is what the NBN does. There will be many businesses—and I have operated a couple of organisations which would have been well suited to people working from home. It is not hard to do your bookkeeping from home. You can scan the invoices in, email them across, and people can put the figures in MYOB or whatever accounting suite they use. People would not have to drive the hour to work and would perhaps be able to match some of their childcare commitments with their work. I think some studies say that it is actually a very productive way of people working. In terms of productivity, people working from home are measured as being perhaps higher than the morning around the morning tea and the coffee and the chat, as you get into work every day. So if we are to make our cities more livable then teleworking could well be the way to go.

There are some stats which indicate enormous savings in the downtime that Senator Ludlam spoke about—some 120 million litres of fuel, avoiding 320,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide and reducing congestion costs, of $470 million. These things are not new items. This government is on the job. As far as taxing the superprofits of mining companies is concerned, that is happening. We are not taxing the superprofits of mining companies, as some of the states do, in terms of royalties, which have no regard for profitability; it is a just a tax on a tonne out of the ground. The superprofits are being taxed and those taxable dollars are being put to good use. I am sure that, when the revenue reaches the appropriate level, consideration will be given as to how we can better use those dollars and get our cities to be more livable, more productive and more efficient places of work, and places of good living.