Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

We are talking about dams actually, Senator Williams. Up in Townsville, I got some excellent proposals for infrastructure investment in dams that were not being financed. And our committee worked out why the private sector was not financing these infrastructure projects, why there is a clear market failure and why there is a role for government in our lives in this country—that is, economic leadership.

It is worth reading the latest Quarterly Essay. In it, George Megalogenis talks about our balancing act, about how we are going to get through what is ultimately going to be the doldrums for our country and our economy in the coming years. The conclusion he arrived at also is that we need infrastructure spending to invest in future generations and to stimulate the economy. But he also said we need a new structure around infrastructure financing, around how projects are selected and around how they are depoliticised. Because they are what the private sector is seeing as risk. They are the risk premiums the investors are building into their expectation on infrastructure financing and that is why they do not want to touch a lot of these infrastructure projects that are sitting there waiting to be funded. Government should bloody well fund them, in my opinion, because what we need in this country is economic leadership, not more spin—'leave it to the private sector, leave it to big business and everything will be fine'.

In terms of vision and leadership, it really does disappoint me that over those three Governor-General's speeches, we have gone from the age of entitlement to suddenly the same ideological attack on poor people in this country—the taxed and the taxed-nots—the same rhetoric. This stuff is not flying; people do not care about that. They actually want to see government step in and show leadership and play an active role in their lives. This kind of IPA Young Liberal party politics does not cut it with the people out on the street. Sorry, Senator Paterson—through you, Acting Deputy President—it just does not cut it. People want to see governments playing an active role in their lives.

It is an historic opportunity for us to nation build right now, to select projects we do want to see capital go into—projects that can be financed over time, projects that can be paid off, projects that can be monetised, projects that can create employment for Australians all around this country, projects that lead to a more prosperous country, projects that make us more sustainable, projects that give us a better quality of living, projects that make us happier. These are the things governments need to do. I am proud to say that if you do not think I have the evidence to support this then go and look at the Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications inquiry into Planning, Procurement and Funding for Australia's future Infrastructure that we completed a week before the double-dissolution. It was backed by both the Liberal and Labor parties. There was no dissenting report. Have a read of it. Six months of evidence has gone into that from experts including Standard and Poor's—by the way, Senator Paterson, through you, Acting Deputy President—and it deals with the issue of the triple-A credit rating, why this can be done and why $50 billion is not unreasonable for us to go out and borrow now and invest now. Fifty billion dollars; let's borrow it, let's invest it and let's cut the crap about debt.