NATION BUILDING PROGRAM (NATIONAL LAND TRANSPORT) AMENDMENT BILL 2009 Second Reading
28th May, 2009
Mr TRUSS (Wide Bay--Leader of the Nationals)(12.34 pm)--The Nation Building Program (National
Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2009 reinforces what
we already know about the Rudd Labor government: it
is all about spin. It has certainly been about debt,
spending, unemployment and running an economy into
the ground, but fundamentally it has been about spin.
We are all amazed that this government has managed
to blow a budget deficit of more than $20 billion and
turn it into an astonishing $58 billion deficit in just 18
months. We already know that Australia is facing a
gross debt of at least $315 billion, or around $15,000
for every man, woman and child in the country. And of
course that $315 billion does not include the $40 billion
that is going to have to be borrowed for the broadband
fantasy or the $60 billion for projects that have
been referred to by the government in its Nation Building
Program, for which additional money is required.
We do not know how much we are up for with the
Ruddbank or how much for defence commitments and
any number of other spending initiatives that the government
may be intending to take between now and the
time when that debt peaks. We also know that a very
large proportion of this debt is due not to revenue
downturns but to reckless spending decisions that the
government has taken.
But what is worst of all is that there is no plan to repay
this money. Labor has no idea where the funds are
going to come from to repay the spending spree that
has been going on in recent times. We all know that
there is really only one plan: to spend, spend, spend
and then rely on the next coalition government to pay it
off. It took 10 years to pay off the last debt. How long
is it going to take to pay off the current one?
Labor often criticises the coalition for not having
spent enough when in government. The Minister for
Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and
Local Government is a frequent offender in this regard,
saying, 'We are spending where the previous government
didn't spend.' What the minister for infrastructure
needs to remember is that when we were in government
we were paying for what Labor spent the last
time it was in government. The key issue is not so
much how much you can spend in a day but how much
you can actually pay for.
In fact, there are many things that the previous coalition
government would have loved to have done--
worthwhile projects we would have liked to have pursued--
but we could not because we had an interest and
redemption bill to pay on the previous government's
mismanagement. Of course, the next coalition government
is going to face similar difficulties. No-one believes
that any Labor government will ever retire debt.
The reality is that the next coalition government will
also not be able to spend as much as we would like on
roads, rail and other things because we will be paying
off debt. But that is not something that Labor should be
boasting about; they should be ashamed of the fact that
they will leave behind such a deficit for future governments
and future generations to repay. To be out
there boasting about how much is going to be spent,
when all of that money is going to have to be borrowed,
much of it from overseas, so that these projects
can proceed, is only telling a very small proportion of
the story. There are potholes that will not be filled in
the future because of the expenditure that is going on
today.
When you buy a new car, you get the pleasure
out of the purchase of that car, but you cannot afford to
buy another one until you have paid off the one you
have. You spend the next few years going without other
things because you are paying off your car. This kind
of simple lesson in household budgeting seems to have
been lost on the incumbents on the government
benches.
The government uses a lot of rhetoric and spin to
talk about the work that it has been doing--the socalled
revolutionary processes and the biggest spending
program in history--all of which is essentially
empty spin. Infrastructure Australia, for instance, is not
the first to have some kind of a process to assess projects
on their merits.
Infrastructure Australia is not the
first to have transparent opportunities for public input
into assessing road projects and making decisions
about infrastructure expenditure. AusLink was established
to achieve those sorts of objectives. It involved
consultation with the states. The community even had
opportunities to make suggestions about projects which
should be considered, and that entire process was undertaken
in a fair and appropriate manner. If there is
some suggestion that there was a coalition conspiracy
about the projects that were funded, I would remind
you that all of the state governments were Labor for a
fair proportion of that time and they were actively involved
as partners in this process and were generally
co-funders.
So, in reality, there has always been an
open and transparent process. In fact, a stark change in
the way in which this government is dealing with issues
is that the processes of Infrastructure Australia are
clearly not open and transparent. They are not available
for public scrutiny. None of the documents are going to
be released. We saw the spectacle during Senate estimates
yesterday of the minister flatly refusing to provide
any of the data that might support the choices that
the government has made in relation to the funding
announcements. I am going to talk more about that
later.
This legislation is another example of where spin is
actually triumphing over economic sustainability. It is
an example of spin to cover up economic incompetence.
The key element of this bill is a name change.
That is right; it is just a name change. It is changing the
name of AusLink to the Nation Building Program. It is
remarkable that the government would consider using
the resources of the public purse, the time needed to
draft legislation and the priority given in parliament to
what is essentially a piece of spin-doctoring. It is perhaps
not surprising, though, because the government
think that using the time of this place for a rebranding
exercise, to change the name of something that was a
great success but is also linked to the previous government,
is a worthwhile activity.
The government are trying to wipe out the memory of AusLink. AusLink in
the hearts of Australians is associated with the previous
government, and we cannot have anything good that
the people love find its way through a Labor government.
So they changed the name. This has been a successful
program and its name is being changed for no
other reason than it was associated with the previous
government.
During the election campaign Labor were quite
happy to talk about projects that were going to be
funded under AusLink and AusLink 2. They allowed
the word to pass their lips on hundreds of occasions
during the election campaign, but when they came into
office they started choking on the word. So we started
seeing new descriptions of the program that everyone
knew was AusLink 2. First they started talking about a
'building Australia program'. Those words were attached
to projects in December 2008, but on 5 February
2009 in a COAG communique AusLink was turned
into the Nation Building Program. That is the term that
the George Orwell robots in the minister's office have
settled on, and that is why we have this bill of spin and
the rewriting of history. It says so much about the government
that they consider this legislation a priority to
be brought on in budget week.
The bill is designed to encourage the error and create
the myth that nation building is something unique
to Labor. It is not. We see the Prime Minister running
around with his helmet on and the tractors starting up
behind him while the television cameras are in sight.
That is the kind of thing we are getting--spin and the
image but no substance. The commitment to infrastructure
lies with those who have delivered it over the
years and delivered the sound economic management
to be able to build things and pay for them--namely,
the coalition. I remind members of the Labor Party that
infrastructure spending in Australia boomed during the
years of the coalition government. In spite of what you
may hear the minister say during question time about
us having done nothing in government, the reality is
that, according to the engineering construction activity
index published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics,
in constant 2007 dollar terms infrastructure spending
increased from $21 billion in 1996 to over $56 billion
by 2007. Put another way, infrastructure spending in
Australia rose from just under three per cent of GDP in
1996 to nearly 5½ per cent of GDP in 2007.
So much for Labor's claims that infrastructure
spending declined under the coalition. It is true that, in
the early years of government, the task of repaying the
debt consumed resources that might otherwise have
been spent on road funding. But when AusLink was
introduced there was a massive increase in road funding.
For the first time we had a national plan which
dealt with infrastructure requirements in the years
ahead, a plan which schematically dealt with the corridors
around the country, identified the task and looked
at the best way to deal with it, whether it be road or
rail--and there was a significant increase in expenditure
at that time. It was the coalition, not Labor, that
established AusLink. It was the coalition, not Labor,
that developed Australia's first national land transport
plan since Federation, It was the coalition, not Labor,
that massively increased expenditure on upgrading
road and rail.
Under AusLink the coalition government spent more
on nation building than any other Commonwealth government
since Federation. In terms of AusLink 2, the
former coalition government in 2007-08 pledged to
invest $31 billion in transport infrastructure. Labor
have never matched this. They are committing less
money over the next five years on transport infrastructure
than the coalition had pledged over the same period.
In 2009-10, Labor will spend nearly $1.5 billion
less on transport than in 2008-09. There are two key
points here.
Firstly, the Labor Party say they have a
huge program on road and rail infrastructure. The truth
is that they will spend less on road and rail over the
next six years than the coalition had committed--less,
not more. This program represents a reduction in expenditure
on road and rail from what the coalition had
committed.
Secondly, the government are talking about
an increase in expenditure to deal with a recession, and
they say we need to have some kind of stimulus program.
They are actually going to spend $1.5 billion less
in 2009-10 than has been allocated this year.
So the whole of what Labor are talking about is empty spin.
I am opposed to the cuts in expenditure
on road funding that Labor have introduced--and
I will explain why I am opposed to that as we go further.
The key element of Labor's proposal was the idea
that Infrastructure Australia would transparently assess
projects on their merits. Sir Rod Eddington was appointed,
with a group of mates, to make these assessments
and deliver advice to the government on which
projects should be funded. But they will not tell us
what any of this advice was. They will not release any
of the documents. They will not release any of the data.
In fact the only thing we have from Infrastructure Australia
is a list of 97 projects last year--and now we
have Labor's national infrastructure priority report of
2009.
But Labor have not chosen the projects on their list
that are identified as ones to be funded. Some of those
projects are included, but other projects that merely
have potential have been funded--they have been
brought forward. And other projects that are on none of
the lists have been funded. In fact the government have
now publicly admitted that they chose the projects. The
Infrastructure Australia exercise was completely irrelevant.
It was a waste of taxpayers' money and a waste of
the resources of people who meaningfully made contributions
to the assessment process. Their advice was
simply ignored. Labor had already made up their minds
which projects were going to be funded. Many of the
projects appeared on Labor's election promises list and
were therefore somehow immune from Infrastructure
Australia's processes. Are they being funded on the
basis of their merits--or not?
It sounds like the Better Regions Program to me--the Better Regions rort--
under which Labor's election promises are being
funded whether or not they have any merit. No-one
other than Labor candidates could even apply for this
particular scheme--and won't I be looking forward to
the Auditor-General's report into this program! I hope
the Auditor-General will also do a report into the Infrastructure
Australia process, because it too has been
designed to cover up the facts rather than expose them.
We have a list of projects that have been announced.
It is in fact Labor's list. It is not Infrastructure Australia's
list at all. These are projects that Labor have chosen.
The list includes some projects which Labor had
committed to but the coalition had not. It does not include
some projects that we had committed to but Labor
had not. It commits to some projects that both sides
of politics had committed to. If the government want to
make decisions about which projects are going to be
funded, they should be honest about it and say they are
making all the decisions for their own political reasons.
Don't try and blame Sir Rod Eddington or someone
else and try to pretend there is some kind of open process
when clearly it has not been there.
I will now discuss some of the specific projects that
are being funded by the government. There are two
projects that have been brought forward on the government's
claim that they are shovel ready. This is part
of the government's problem: they have all these grand
ideas but none of the projects are ready to start. Not
only do they not have the money; they do not have the
engineering plans, and the planning process has not
been gone through. So some of these projects are years
and years away. Indeed, many of the projects in this
budget go out for more than a decade before they are
actually funded. So much for them being a stimulus
package.
But there are two projects that are genuinely shovel
ready. One of them is the F3 extension to Branxton in
the Hunter Valley. That is genuinely ready because the
previous government had spent $109 million getting it
genuinely ready. We purchased the land and got the
design process underway, and it was ready to go. Indeed,
the member for Hunter was very supportive of
this project before the last election. But on the very day
after the election he withdrew his support and the project
was put on hold for 18 months. Here is a project
that was shovel ready 18 months ago and Labor did
nothing. Instead they commissioned a new study, a
new report, on the traffic needs of the Hunter.
I do not know what has happened to that study--it
has not seen the light yet--but they are going ahead
with the project that we had ready to go. All Labor
have done with this project is delay it for 18 months,
by which time the cost has gone up further. So it was
ready, all right, but give the credit where it was due: it
was shovel ready because the previous government had
got it shovel ready. But, of course, we cannot have the
previous government being given too much credit for
it, so it is not going to be called the F3 to Branxton
anymore. In a new piece of spin, it is now going to be
called the Hunter Expressway so somebody might
think that it is actually a different project from the one
that they held up for 18 months.
The second project that was genuinely shovel ready
is the 12-kilometre Cooroy to Curra section of the
Bruce Highway. That is shovel ready because the
Queensland government got it shovel ready because it
is the road that goes around the Traveston Crossing
dam. We all hope the Traveston Crossing dam will not
be built and that the Commonwealth will have the good
sense to honour its environmental responsibilities and
stop the project. But, if it goes ahead, nine kilometres
of the Bruce Highway will be flooded. Nine kilometres
will go under water by 2011, so if the government does
not start building this road now there will be a nine kilometre
gap in the national highway that you will
have to traverse by boat. That is why this project is
shovel ready. In fact, the Queensland Minister for Main
Roads said before the last state election that they were
going to pay for the whole road themselves. The
Queensland government intended to build this, to actually
fund it--and they had the money there to fund it.
The Commonwealth government has been conned into
funding a project that the Queensland government intended
to pay for, and it is trying to make some kind of
a virtue of it.
The second thing that the minister often says is that
they are doing it when the previous government did not
do it. Again, let me make this point absolutely clear: it
was the previous government that got the four-lane
highway up to Cooroy; it was the previous government
that significantly upgraded the existing road, including
the work that is being done through Gympie at the present
time; and it was the previous government that did
the design work to get it to the stage where, with a
route identified, the project can proceed. That had not
been done by previous Labor state governments, but
we did all the work to get it to that stage. This is a project
that is shovel ready because it is a part of a dam
scheme that the state government had already developed.
I will also make some comments about the quite appalling
way in which the minister and the Prime Minister
have tried to make out that this is some kind of
compassionate program. He referred to the 13 people
who have been killed on this section of road over recent
years. There have in fact been 54 lives lost between
Cooroy and Curra over that period, only 13 of
them on this section, and very few, if any, since the
road was upgraded in 2006. A significant amount of
money was spent on safety improvements on that section
of the road, including a centre fence, because this
section had been laid with a stone mastic service which
proved to be unsafe in wet times. Most of the accidents
and fatalities that have been referred to have in fact
been on a section of road that has subsequently been
repaired, so if they actually want to fix the places
where people are dying at the present time they should
choose other sections. Indeed, there was a serious accident
earlier this week--the news report said 'Mother
critical'--but it was not on the section where the Prime
Minister has been out with his hard hat on, pretending
that they are doing this to deal with the safety problems
on the road.
Let me say that there are safety problems on all of
the road, it all needs to be fixed, and it is reasonable
that this section be considered in that context. However,
the government has not solved the safety problems
on Cooroy to Curra by building this section of
road. The most dangerous sections still remain to be
done. So I call on the government to honour the coalition's
commitment made at the last election to complete
this section by 2020. Put forward the necessary
funding to make sure there will be an ongoing program
so that this 'death' highway can in fact be rebuilt.
There are many other projects of this nature that remain
on the list, but key Labor election promises remain
unfulfilled. Labor's pledge to allocate $840 million
for a dedicated freight line between Strathfield and
Gosford, dealing with one of the most serious rail
freight bottlenecks on the east coast, remains delayed
for another study. We are still waiting for Labor to duplicate
the Western Highway from Bacchus Marsh to
the South Australian border, as it promised, and for
Labor to honour its commitment for $2½ billion for the
missing link from the Gateway Motorway to Nudgee in
north Brisbane.
We need to look at some of the other projects that
are being funded. It is quite interesting that the government
is going to spend significant funding on the
Pacific Highway, as did the coalition. However, Labor
has made a significant change. Previously, this was a
project that was being jointly funded by the New South
Wales and Commonwealth governments--it was a 50-
50 project. The Commonwealth is now going to pick
up the full cost of the Pacific Highway, letting New
South Wales off their 50 per cent of the cost. That is a
$5 billion plus gift to the bankrupt New South Wales
Labor government. Instead of paying their share, they
are being let off the hook. Look at some of the other
projects that are on this list, such as the proposal to do
a $91 million study on the Sydney West Metro. The
actual cost of this project will be about $6 billion.
There is a $20 million study for the Brisbane inner-city
rail. That project is going to cost about $14 billion.
Labor cannot pretend they are actually building these
things; they are just studying--so we are going to have
a study-led recovery.
What about the increased expenditure on the Ipswich
Motorway? This is because the cost of the
scheme has blown out of all proportion. There is $365
million for the Gold Coast railway, and that is only a
possible equity contribution, with no guarantee the project
is even going to go ahead. It is described only as a
possible equity contribution, so who knows whether
we will get any real benefit from that as well. The
Darwin port and the Oakajee port also require significant
investments by other parties. And if anyone had
any idea that perhaps this was some kind of genuine
and honest process they only have to look at the Adelaide
O-Bahn project. It was announced as a priority
project, but it was not even requested by the South
Australian government. It was never on the short list
that was published by IA in December last year, and
yet it is being funded. When it was announced, the
minister in South Australia was honest enough to say,
'Well, that's a nice surprise; we didn't even ask for
it'--and yet it is supposed to be such a magnificent
priority. This is the hypocrisy of the way this government
has been behaving. It is addicted to spin.
In the few minutes that are still available to me I
want to deal with some of the other features of the bill
which again demonstrate some disturbing trends. It is
clear that Labor is firing another bullet in its war
against regional Australia in this legislation. We already
know that most of the $8.4 billion for new projects,
funded from the former government's surplus,
will be spent on urban passenger transport projects.
There is a significant shift in funding in what the government
has announced away from road and rail projects,
especially in regional areas, to urban public
transport.
This bill modifies part 6 of the principal act, the
AusLink (National Land Transport) Act 2005, to enact
a basic change to what was known as AusLink strategic
regional projects. Members may recall that the Aus-
Link Strategic Regional Program was designed to assist
state and local governments to build better transport
networks, to support industry, tourism and economic
development. The purpose of the strategic regional
program was to foster partnerships and to develop
networks to upgrade infrastructure related projects
in areas off the National Land Transport Network.
Around $469 million went to fund projects under the
strategic regional program between 2004 and 2007,
and there are many very worthwhile projects around
the nation that benefited from that funding. That is going
to change because the government want to amend
section 55 of the act to remove all references to 'regional'
and simply re-name the strategic regional initiative
to become a nation-building program for offnetwork
projects. In other words, the key characteristic
of the strategic regional program will cease to exist and
funding will now be available for urban Australia. You
have got regional strategic roads program funding and
now it is going to be spent in the cities. This is a clear
shift in the priorities of the Labor Party and it will be
opposed by the coalition.
Clearly, Labor have identified a long list of projects that they intend to fund with this money and $762.5 million, or 86 per cent of what
is to be available, has been set aside to fund their election
promises. Many of these promises were made for
areas that could not be funded under the strategic regional
program because they did not meet the guidelines,
so Labor are getting rid of the program so they
can fund ill-thought-out, ill-considered and ill-valued
projects that were simply Labor Party election stunts.
This amendment clears the legislative path to use these
significant funds for transport related infrastructure
away from regional Australia.
There is a second element of major change which
we will oppose. I refer to the changes to the Black Spot
Program, a very successful program that has saved
many lives. The then Bureau of Transport Economics
estimated that by 2007 the Black Spot Program had
saved at least 130 lives and prevented 6,000 serious
accidents by upgrading 4,200 dangerous sites on state
and local roads. This was a coalition initiative. We had
to restore it after Labor had abolished the program. The
government allocated $30 million in 2008-09 and $60
million in 2009-10 to extend its coverage. This is on
top of the government's announcement in December
2008 that it would more than double the Black Spot
Program funding for 2008-09 from $50 million to $110
million.
So it is pleasing that this Labor government
has not done what the previous Labor government did
and abolish the program but has indeed committed
some additional funding. We welcome that. However,
what Labor is now doing is proposing to change the
very nature of the Black Spot Program so the benefits
will not flow in the future to projects in local communities,
to the roads and streets where there have been
accidents. In fact, the black spot funding is now going
to be available to be spent on the national network, so
it will be subsumed into the highway system.
I accept that there are dangerous spots on our highways,
but there is a very substantial funding program
that provides support for upgrading the highways. We
should not be taking away money from projects for
local streets and roads to spend it on the national highway
network. I wonder whether we will see any money
left for the local roads. I wonder whether it is all now
going to go on one or two projects for the national
highway that would take all this money away. So we
will be opposing that element of the bill and will be
putting forward an amendment to keep the black spot
funding for areas off the National Land Transport Network.
They can be in either city or country, as they are
now, but the funding should not be allocated into an
area which is already funded in substantial quantities
through other programs.
This bill is all about government spin and, unfortunately,
Labor are attempting to rewrite history to take
out of the public's memory some of the excellent work
that the previous government did with road and rail
funding. In particular, well-known names like AusLink
are to disappear so that any association with the projects
of the previous government can be written away.
That is just typical of the way in which Labor governments
behave: it is all spin. It is all about TV images
and 30-second spots on the news. It is all spin and
there is no substance. (Time expired)
