ADDRESS TO PARLIAMENT - BILLS - INFRASTRUCTURE AUSTRALIA AMENDMENT (INDEPENDENT REVIEW) BILL 2023 - SECOND READING

This bill is a slight on the Prime Minister. The Infrastructure Australia Amendment (Independent Review) Bill 2023 questions the Prime Minister's authority, because what it seeks to do, and what the government's reforms will achieve, is to make Infrastructure Australia less independent of government by replacing a 12-member board with three commissioners appointed by the minister. Who will those three commissioners be? Well, we know from experience that they'll be union representatives. We know that they'll be people placed on IA to do the government's bidding. That is unfortunate. Infrastructure Australia does have a role to play. I know this because I was the infrastructure minister for 3⅓ years. During much of that time, Romilly Madew was the chief executive officer, and a good CEO she was. She left to take up a position with Engineers Australia, and I wish her every success in the future.

Rather than the accepted view by those opposite, perhaps, that having a dozen members of the Infrastructure Australia board was unwieldy because there were so many of them, it actually worked quite well, bringing expertise and experience from different fields and bringing people from different geographic areas to provide knowledge and insight to the priority list. The priority list was important, although it wasn't critical and absolute that the government of the day had to follow the priority list, because governments sometimes have different objectives.

What I worry is that in the very short-term future, as the member for Nicholls quite correctly just pointed out, projects are going to be shelved because of the 90-day review placed on them by the member for Ballarat, who argues that the $120 billion investment pipeline is perhaps not fit for purpose. Many, perhaps most, of those projects are in regional Australia. We just heard the member for Nicholls articulate the importance of the Shepparton bypass. That project, as he succinctly pointed out, may not stack up under the proposed 90-day review. Of course, those opposite will shout: 'It was pork-barrelling. It shouldn't have been put on the list in the first place.' But it was put there because the people of Mooroopna, the people of Shepparton, the people of the electorate of Nicholls, deserve it. Moreover, they need it. It is going to provide a vital flood-free structure that is going to be there for the future.

The $120 billion pipeline of investment supports 100,000 workers. Do you know what, Member for Nicholls? Many of those workers are union members. We applaud that. We on the coalition side applaud the fact that many of those workers hold a union ticket. Good on them! It also supports businesses, and not just the tier 1 businesses, which often get carriage of these big infrastructure projects, but many of the tier 2 and, perhaps even more importantly, tier 3 businesses which underpin infrastructure in Australia. I look at the Inland Rail project. What a transformational project that is: Melbourne to Brisbane, getting goods and produce—the very best of our farmers' labours—to port within 24 hours. We've been talking about it as a nation since the 1890s. There were plans drawn up all those years ago—130 years ago—but it took a coalition government to start the project off. I can remember well signing those intergovernmental agreements with the three state ministers, two of whom, Mark Bailey in Queensland, who was the third minister we signed, and Jacinta Allan in Victoria, who was the first, were Labor ministers. And, of course, we signed the agreement with New South Wales on that historic occasion at Parkes.

Jacinta Allan—I know she was referenced by the member for Nicholls—was somebody who actually believed in building infrastructure with the then coalition government, yet this Labor government want to turn all that on its head. They want to shelve the projects which are going to provide so many jobs and so much relief for regional Australia in particular. Just take the New South Wales example: they won't increase the dam wall at Wyangala by 10 metres. The project has been kicked off into the never-never by the federal Labor government under last night's budget.

Rose Jackson, the New South Wales Minister for Water, is saying: 'We're not interested in building dams. What we're interested in is building escape routes for the people of Forbes.' That is insulting to those townsfolk in the Central West. They're not going to get a dam wall raised to provide flood-free security; they're going to get better escape routes so that they can get out of Forbes quicker. (Extension of time granted) This inner-city thinking is so representative of so many people on the Labor side. It is such a shame that the infrastructure minister, who hails from Ballarat, unfortunately has the same thinking about infrastructure. It is such a shame that so many of those projects are regionally based. So many of those projects are going to make such a difference for regional people.

I'll digress just a little bit, because I remember that one of the proudest moments I had as infrastructure minister was turning the first sod at Badgerys Creek, Western Sydney airport. That airport—not Sydney's second airport but Western Sydney's first airport, the Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport—is going to be able to take some of the pressure or, one could argue, much of the pressure away from Mascot and provide Western Sydney, indeed all those agriculture producing districts, access to overseas markets that they would otherwise not have had. When it comes to airports, we invested heavily in remote airstrips in particular. We knew how important it was, and we saw how important it was particularly when COVID was at its worst. It enabled those remote centres to have access through Rex, other direct flights and, indeed, the Royal Flying Doctor Service—what a great service they provide—to get personal protection equipment, vaccines and, perhaps even more importantly, health professionals to those areas to service those remote towns at a time when the global pandemic was perhaps at its worst and the fear amongst the people was certainly at its highest.

Look at the railway projects that we've put in place, not just Inland Rail but support for states through other rail links. Don't just take my word for it; get a rail expert, like the member for Parkes, talking up and talking about rail because it is so important, particularly for regional Australia.

Then, of course, we come to roads. During the worst of COVID—and we're not out of the woods yet by any stretch of the imagination—I put $3 billion of additional funding into road safety measures. Sadly, tragically and unfortunately, I saw that road safety initiatives were cut in last night's budget. This is the Keys2drive project—those sorts of initiatives that save lives. Unfortunately, they were parked, for want of a better word, in last night's budget. There can be no greater investment in the infrastructure space than investment in road safety measures, because all too often we see the result of not putting money into road safety initiatives, and that is tragedies on our highways and our byways, and all too often regional people are overrepresented in the road toll. That is such a shame. We need to do better. It needs to be bipartisan. It certainly was when I was the Deputy Prime Minister.

Then, of course, we have a 90-day review, put in place by the infrastructure minister. What will that mean for many of the projects that are currently on those lists? There are many of them—hundreds if not thousands of them, if you count all the small-time projects; even, indeed, the Stronger Communities program—from which electorates benefited. Yes, some of them were infrastructure: they were sporting infrastructure; they were women's change rooms. I know the sports program was placed under heavy fire, and it cost a minister her job when that initiative was put in place.

I know Labor argued about the colour coded spreadsheets. Unfortunately, with some of these programs and projects going forward, there are colour coded spreadsheets, but it's all red. It's all Labor. You only have to look at the latest round of the Mobile Black Spot Program put in place by the government. Every one of the 25 or 26 projects in New South Wales was in a Labor seat. That is disgraceful. I know the minister came out and gave an update and said, 'It wasn't on the black spot priority list.' Well, it was, but the minister argued the fact that they were election commitments. I know there has to be a place for election commitments. You cannot have candidates who hold absolutely no hope of ever getting elected going around spruiking and promising the world and then expecting their promises to get delivered. I get that; I understand that. But, fair's fair, when it comes to priority black spot areas, we should be doing them for those in need and for those most deserving, and many of those are in bushfire-prone areas. That last round was certainly a disgrace, because it was all Labor, a hundred per cent Labor, in New South Wales, and that is simply not good enough.

Infrastructure Australia plays an important role. It was established by Labor in 2008 when the now Prime Minister, as I mentioned in my introductory remarks, was the infrastructure minister. The reason I say it's a slight on the Prime Minister is that this is his baby. I've heard the member for Grayndler speak eloquently, I'll say, but passionately about the role of Infrastructure Australia. Yet now what we see is the board of 12 being replaced by three commissioners appointed by the minister. This provides less authority for the infrastructure priorities of the nation. I would question where those three will come from. Will they all come from a particular state? Will it be one of the larger states—say, New South Wales or perhaps Victoria, so that we can appease the Victorian Premier Dan Andrews? I appreciate, too, that in mainland Australia we're wall-to-wall with Labor states, so I just don't see the benefit of slashing nine positions and replacing them with three, because you get nine fewer views. You get nine fewer opinions on infrastructure projects. You can argue all you like about Infrastructure Australia and maybe say it's unwieldy, but when you have a 12-person board you have the ability to have people from all over Australia—all six states and the two territories. When you've got only three, that limits you. Do you get Western Australia, which don't have one of those three, arguing, perhaps quite correctly, that they have missed out. You might get them from Tasmania, or, indeed, they might all be from the ACT. That'd make it easier for them to appear in meetings. They might all be from the states, and then the Northern Territory might complain that their views are not being heard or listened to.

We've heard a lot from Labor this year about the Voice. When it comes to infrastructure, this is taking the voice away from those states, from those communities and certainly from the regions that need it so much. I would contend that the infrastructure needs and priorities of this nation are not going to be met as well if this bill passes, because what will see is a watering down of what Infrastructure Australia stood for, something that the Prime Minister put in place back in 2008 when he was infrastructure minister, and that is a great pity.