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House Standing Committee on Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government
Transcript: Session 4 – Closing remarks
CHAIR—I am really delighted that the Hon. Ian Macfarlane, who is a new member of this parliamentary committee and also the shadow minister for infrastructure and water, has agreed to give the closing remarks for this conference. Ian was elected to the House of Representatives as the member for Groom in Queensland in 1998. He was the previous minister for industry, tourism and resources. Certainly in the short time that I have known him, Ian has been one of the members of parliament, both in the ministry and in the shadow ministry, who has really shown an interest in ideas—the promulgation of ideas and making things work between the public and private sectors. The fact that he sat down with the new Minister Ferguson—I hate to tell you, Ian, that I hope you do not replace him for a long time yet—is a rare thing in politics. He is one of the members of this parliament who has increasingly provided his expertise and experience in government and in opposition. I welcome Ian Macfarlane.
Mr IAN MACFARLANE—Thank you very much, Catherine. It is a pleasure to make the closing remarks today. I am always fascinated by technology. I boast that I have had in my house a smart meter for five years—courtesy of being the minister for energy, of course—but I am waiting for the day when it does more than flash red lights at me. That is a challenge to everyone out there and those of us up here.
Infrastructure really is the bread and butter of Australia’s future. If Australia is to handle a population of 35 million by 2050 it is now more important than ever that we get that infrastructure planning right—that we get it in place before the population pressures, which we are experiencing now with just 22 million people, start increasing. It will also become increasingly critical that the planning and prioritising of projects takes place in an objective, transparent and accountable manner that not only maximises productivity, and ensures good outcomes in that sense, but enhances investor confidence. Because, just as the Commonwealth government is going to have to play a bigger role in funding infrastructure projects nationally at a state level, so too is the public sector going to have to play a bigger role in that funding. We need to take a comprehensive approach that looks beyond the traditional ideas of road and rail infrastructure to incorporate planning across fields as diverse as water, energy, communications, IT, and health—the list just goes on.
Australia has major cities that are geographically dispersed, and is experiencing continued development of major resource industries in both the eastern and western parts of the continent. Therefore, it is important to note that the use and growth of transport infrastructure will not decline any time soon. Making long-term, careful, considered infrastructure investments will be particularly crucial to boost productivity and allow full development of the next wave of our resources boom. Railways, ports and roads are taking on an increasing burden to meet that demand, and of course we have to add to that the existing load from agriculture and other freight jobs. That is adding to what is now clear is a really close-to-capacity infrastructure system. There is no better example of this than in the city of Toowoomba, where 4,000 trucks a day traverse the main street. That is 4,000 trucks that share those roads with workers, families, schoolchildren, school buses and emergency vehicles. That dangerous congestion will just keep growing as the energy sector west of Toowoomba continues to boom.
The urgency of the Toowoomba bypass is obvious, and just one example of the road infrastructure projects that need to be done, and that will have a direct impact on the nation’s productivity and be part of the nation’s long-term infrastructure plan. As I have said, delegates here today recognise that the term ‘infrastructure’ covers so much more than transport projects and extends to other facets such as energy, water, health and communications. With that expanded understanding, traditional notions of infrastructure as being transport-specific should not be swept away but rather broadened and built on to encompass other areas. The challenge for government—all governments—and oppositions, I should add, is to make the most efficient use of resources to address the broad range of projects competing for the available resources.
In 2008, Infrastructure Australia’s first report listed 94 infrastructure projects, and the competition for funding across a range of infrastructure areas in all states and territories means that is even more important that we approach infrastructure development from a position of economic strength. Investment should focus on productivity, and decisions should be made open and transparent. That has not always been the case, particularly more recently, and there must be rigorous economic analyses, costings and long-term management plans as we make future infrastructure decisions.
It is also essential when dealing in the realm of known quantities to know what the population growth is going to be and what the population plans are of both the Commonwealth and state governments. We have seen examples where state governments have got it wrong. I, like Jon, am no apologist for the states and would be quite happy to abolish them, but in the meantime we have to understand that continuous backward and forward—or, I should say, backwards and further backwards—motion by state governments simply undermines investor and public confidence. We have seen that in New South Wales, and we have seen it in Victoria. We need to understand that those challenges are going to expand to other states. The infrastructure pressure that, for instance, the south-east corner of Queensland is under means that, when we make decisions, we need to make them properly, and we need them to be the right decisions. Reversing, revisiting or re-analysing a decision does destroy confidence, and, as I said earlier, investment conference is crucial.
Smart infrastructure will certainly have an important role to play, and it is unfortunate that we have seen some fairly ordinary attempts at that of late. For example, the MYKI problems in Melbourne have brought to light the fact that if we try to rush these sorts of projects without sufficient understanding and technical know-how, then problems are invariably caused not only for that project but for other projects as well. These hurdles aside, there is a great deal of untapped potential for smart infrastructure to make transport safer and more efficient. It is not just transport that benefits from smart infrastructure. As we have just heard and as we heard earlier today, spatial information and precise positioning have also emerged as a critical new capability for the agriculture, mining engineering and construction sectors and will progressively expand to provide benefits for almost all sectors of the economy, including logistics, transport and navigation. Our current approach to this area is fragmented and uncoordinated and is resulting in forgone opportunities and loss of global competitive advantage. We must address this uncoordinated, ad hoc approach to the global national satellite system networks to avoid the high cost of the nation in lost productivity, inefficiencies and duplication.
Openness and transparency in our decision making, along with meticulous planning, will be essential more than ever, which is why the work of this committee and your assistance in the work of this committee is so important. Investing in water infrastructure is equally important for long-term productivity. There are distinct issues facing rural and urban communities, and while they share a common objective—that is, water security—the infrastructure requirements are markedly different. The common thread linking them, though, is the need to make more efficient use of water. It sounds simple, but it is rarely done. Australia continues to all but ignore the potential to recycle waste water for agriculture and industry, yet cities and towns across Australia pour billions of litres of water into the sea annually. Policymakers cannot afford to take such a narrow view of how to reuse urban water supplies.
With the increasing pressure on energy supplies, the smart energy sector has an extensive scope and the need for more efficient infrastructure investments. The move to smart meters is indicative of the types of changes that will make the biggest difference to our energy use, as we move to make more efficient use of energy sources in the future and lower our greenhouse gas emissions. But they must be changes that empower the consumer, and the consumer must feel that he or she is getting a benefit and sharing a benefit with the environment as a result of their actions.
Smart meters have enormous potential to moderate city electricity demand and, with the right infrastructure planning, prevent breakdowns in the distribution system of the type we saw in Queensland earlier this decade, where power poles almost caught fire and power cables to houses literally melted under the demand that was being placed on them. In the not to distant future we will be able to connect via our mobile phone—and perhaps at a later stage, automatically through IT—to our smart meter and switch appliances on and off, and take a quick check of the electricity demand in our households in that hour. If that demand is low and the energy is cheaper, then we will simply turn on various appliances to take advantage—again, by mobile phone—of savings in our electricity.
While some might descry this as yet another example of technology ruling our lives, the correct application of smart meters has the potential to empower electricity consumers in a way that has not yet been fully explored in Australia. I am really not going to be patient for another five years to simply watch the lights go on and off in my smart meter; I actually want to be able to do something about it.
However, this device has so much more potential, particularly to allow consumers to make choices as to whether they use electricity in peak time and therefore pay more, or wait until off-peak time and obviously pay less. But be warned: it is not enough just to roll out smart meters. We must integrate them with all the other technology that is there and be smart in their implementation as well.
In summary, I would like to thank and congratulate everyone who has attended today for your thoughts and input into infrastructure planning. I really enjoy these days and I have never had the opportunity to participate in this sort of forum, where there has been such a free exchange of information. Too often in these forums the commercial competitiveness of the participants means they hide some of their secrets. I am sure some of that has happened today, but I think that today has seen enormous cooperation between all participants.
There is no denying that Australia faces a significant challenge in the years and decades ahead to ensure that our infrastructure program keeps pace and gets ahead of our population growth and the developing demands of our economy. I always remember coming to Canberra—and it would only happen in Canberra—in the early 80s and there were suburbs not only already planned but already curbed, channelled and had electricity supply waiting for houses.
We need to get to that situation with our roads—not that we can ever hope that we will get a situation were there will not be traffic jams, but we need to plan to not only catch up but get ahead of the challenge that is there in front of us. In particular, there needs to be greater recognition that infrastructure planning reaches across all government portfolios and includes more than just the conventional view of infrastructure as roads and railways.
The comment was made earlier, which I wrote down, that infrastructure is the connection of everything to everywhere. Then someone went and said that everything happens somewhere, so you assume that anything that happens anywhere has an effect on everywhere else. There is no doubt that transport infrastructure will always be critical to Australia but the pressing need will also be in the areas of water and energy. Broad thinking and long-term strategy is also required in areas of health, education, IT and communications. The bottom line is that we must be investing in productive capacity and our infrastructure investments will be measured on that basis.
To make full use of smart infrastructure we are going to have to be smarter in the way we plan and plan for the future in a way from which we will reap the harvest not only now but in decades to come. I thank you again for your assistance today. I am certain and in no doubt that today will add to that planning process and to the outcomes we achieve. Thank you.
CHAIR—Thank you, Ian, for those closing remarks. I am delighted to have the expertise of Ian who joined our committee as of February this year, alongside the other committee members who have been involved in this committee for some time. He has been very generous with his time staying here today as well. I thank all of you for your participation and also for generously sharing our knowledge and information with the committee. I hope you also have gained something from the conference today.
I want to thank my committee secretariat—Julia, Michael, Sophia—I think that is all of the members I have in the room. This is a unique thing that the parliamentary committees have done and it has generated a lot of interest across a range of departments. I am sure it is not the last conference to be undertaken by committees. I thank the staff from other parliamentary committees who have been engaged today and Hansard and Broadcasting who have had a very big job today trying to capture all the information.
This is a really exciting time to be involved in infrastructure. The way in which the government has changed the policy settings for infrastructure really is driving a number of different developments across the private sector and smart infrastructure is really going to provide, hopefully, some of the answers and the challenges as to how we stretch federal, state and local government dollars just that little bit further.
Again, I thank you for your participation today and I look forward to lots of the active engagement with this inquiry and this committee as we progress with our smart infrastructure inquiry.
Committee adjourned at 4.27 pm
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