01-October-2009
Articles, Infrastructure, The Economy
The release of the Commonwealth Coordinator-General’s Progress Report on the Rudd Government’s Nation Building Economic Stimulus Plan shows what we have known for some time, Labor can’t be trusted with other people’s money.
Labor may have mastered the press conference but when it comes to delivering on their promises, they are found seriously wanting.
In a panic the Rudd Government has saddled the nation with a choking level of debt with a spending splurge that is riddled with cost blow outs and programmes that fail to boost the economy’s productive capacity into the future.
Despite Commonwealth debt set to balloon to $315 billion by 2013-14, less than 10 per cent is earmarked for vital economic infrastructure, with just $400 million for Australia’s ports, $7.6 billion for rail and $19 billion for highways – many of which were Howard Government commitments.
And just like a decade of their State Labor counterparts, the Rudd Government is long on infrastructure rhetoric but hopeless on delivery.
The Coordinator-General’s report found that the Government’s bungled Building the Education Revolution programme has blown out by $1.7 billion. In what certainly is the low point in Labor’s obsession with spin they described such a blow out “as a decision to recalibrate some elements of the Plan”.
This Education programme joins a growing list of Labor’s bungled roll outs. The Computers in Schools programme was under delivered and still went over budget to the tune of $1.2 billion. The $4 billion Pink Batts Scheme was beset by rorting, and now the Indigenous Minister, Jenny Macklin has revealed that $45 million has been spent on an Indigenous housing program without a single brick having been laid.
All of this gives a lie to the Prime Minister recently penning that “…The Government is implementing a strategic, co-ordinated approach to development, integration and planning of Australia’s critical infrastructure.”
There is no coherence in any Federal infrastructure spending, there is no plan, there is no analysis and there are no benchmarks. It is Labor’s leap of faith.
Where is Australia’s so called first ever Minister for Infrastructure in all of this?
Minister Albanese spent much of his time in the lead up to the last election talking about the need to “adopt a whole of system approach” to infrastructure across all economic and social infrastructure. Unfortunately the rhetoric hasn’t matched reality.
Why was Minister Albanese not central to the $43 billion National Broadband Network announcement?
Why has Minister Albanese played no part in the continued failure by Minister Wong to invest the $5.8 billion left by the Howard Government for water-saving infrastructure projects in rural areas?
Where was Minister Albanese in the bungled $16 billion Building the Education Revolution programme roll out, the wasteful Pink Batts scheme or the Indigenous housing program which hasn’t produced a house?
What has Minister Albanese have to say on hospital or energy infrastructure?
The Rudd Government also made a cast iron commitment “to transparency at all stages of the decision making process”. Yet they have displayed no such transparency in spending billions of dollars of largely borrowed funds which will need to be paid back by the taxpayer in the way of higher interest rates and higher taxes.
In the Budget the Government committed to a further $80 billion worth of projects - $60 billion unfunded – without releasing one skerrick of the analysis on which these projects were based. Where is the transparency and accountability?
Infrastructure Australia was established to ensure evidence-based Government investment in infrastructure projects yet, Minister Albanese claims that it is not possible to make such evidence public because it is commercially sensitive. A completely disingenuous claim.
Why shouldn’t all the cost-benefit analyses including data, assumptions and the models carried out by Infrastructure Australia be made public?
Why was Infrastructure Australia sidelined when considering the $43 billion National Broadband Network or the $16 billion Building the Education Revolution programme?
Anthony Albanese is not our first ever Federal Minister of Infrastructure, as promised, he is in reality Australia’s 33rd Federal Minister for Transport.
In the face of mountains of debt, Australia needs an infrastructure road map – a co-ordinated program that provides value for money through high productivity and maximum private sector involvement, transparency, vision, innovation and excellence.
A co-ordinated program of future projects that have been subject to rigorous analysis and are consistent with a realistic long term funding program.
At the moment we have the Rudd Government employing a hit and hope strategy across all areas of infrastructure with the Australian taxpayer to face the consequences for years to come.