Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I speak in support of the AusLink (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2008. AusLink will remain an integrated part of the Rudd Labor government’s comprehensive plan to deliver key infrastructure projects to all Australians. AusLink is the single integrated national network of land transport funded by state, territory, and federal governments. This is based on a series of transport corridors, including connecting transportation hubs such as airports and railways to urban centres. AusLink includes national projects and the Roads to Recovery program, which maintains and upgrades roads all around Australia.

Sustaining our economic prosperity requires Australia to invest in essential infrastructure which we need to meet the challenges of the future. After 11½ years of the Howard government, our infrastructure backlog in water, energy and land transport alone has been estimated at $25 billion by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia. In 2006, ABN AMRO estimated that $330 billion could usefully be spent on infrastructure in Australia over the next 10 years.

The Rudd government is taking the necessary steps to ensure that the Commonwealth fulfils its role in this area. The government has established Infrastructure Australia and the position of infrastructure coordinator to develop a strategic blueprint for our nation’s infrastructure needs. Under the stewardship of its chair, Sir Rod Eddington, the body is currently seeking public submissions to deliver the government’s nation-building agenda. This body will take a nationally coordinated approach to identify and coordinate priority infrastructure projects which are of high national importance.

After more than 11 years the Howard government failed to deliver not only the required infrastructure to maintain economic growth but the infrastructure to secure continuous economic and productivity growth for the future of all Australians. This is the same coalition government which neglected to tackle climate change and which is still bickering in the back rooms about its existence. It is the same coalition which neglected our schools, our TAFEs and our universities for 12 years. Indeed, we now have an opposition spokesman for education who has barely asked any question on education since his elevation to the front bench this year.

This is the same coalition government which neglected our hospitals and failed to deal with the long list of challenges in the health system. It is the same coalition government which ignored 20 warnings from the Reserve Bank on interest rates. It is the same coalition government which has an opposition leader who believes that he has the right to usurp the independence of the Reserve Bank and then just as quickly changes his mind on the issue when he fronts the next doorstop. That, in its essence, is the problem with the coalition: they are more of the same; they do not understand the neglect that they have left behind. They have wasted the resources boom and the economic reforms of the Hawke and Keating years.

Well might the member for Maranoa, the previous speaker, speak of the wealth generated by resources in the regions. The Howard government never understood that there was a need to build on that resources wealth generated in the regions, a need to build by creating essential infrastructure for the future. On this side of the House, we say more of the same is never good enough. In the last two or three days we have been offered a number of extracts from the memoirs of the former Treasurer, the member for Higgins. The member for Higgins, it seems, is attempting to rewrite the history of the former government, to pretend that the huge areas of inactivity never happened, to pretend, indeed, that the Howard government years were years of near perfect administration, leaving—so the memoirs seem to be asserting—a wonderful legacy. We read, for example, this offering by the member for Higgins—about as close as an admission to failure as it seems we are going to receive:

There are some areas in which the Coalition could have done better. It could have moved earlier to remedy indigenous disadvantage. It could have solved the constitutional issues concerning a republic. It should have rebuffed the challenge from One Nation sooner.

And we can all say to that—

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