2016-03-10
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — Deputy President, because I had already made my contribution to the second-reading speech on the bill before events started to unfold — we are in fact dealing with, in front of us, a radically transformed bill and a radically transformed transaction — I hope I can be given a little bit of latitude in my comments on clause 1. At the time I spoke we were dealing with a completely different bill, and I do not get a second opportunity to speak during the second-reading debate. Whereas 100 years ago Labor would have been all about busting private monopolies, now we are coming here to create another one and, in the process, sell off basically the second-last significant public strategic economic asset. After this, there is only really one thing left to sell, and that is the water boards.
While I do appreciate that the amendments, as they were then, were prepared and circulated to the chamber at the end of the last sitting week — that has certainly been valuable for crossbenchers to understand the negotiations that were going on between the Labor and Liberal parties, and I appreciate that the government took that step to get those on the table — it is only this morning, in fact not even an hour ago, that new amendments have been circulated. In between my member's statement and this debate starting I was able to be given a copy that had some yellow highlighter scribbled on it to indicate the amendments to the amendments.
It is certainly not going to be my intention to drag this process out or attempt some sort of epic filibuster. We all understand what is at stake here. Due to a select committee inquiry, the many, many interested parties and stakeholders had the chance to have their say. The committee's report has been referred to; it is available for us to read. It simply remains to discover, through this process, which of the committee's recommendations have in fact been implemented — the government says pretty much all of them have — and how that is going to work. I do not intend to delay the process overly, but I do intend to question the government about the amendments to the amendments, the ones that just appeared this morning.
The Liberal Party members were very complimentary about how much they have enjoyed working with the Labor Party — or at least one member of the government — to flog off Victoria's last major strategic economic asset. That was very generous of the Liberal Party to note how well the Lib-Lab alliance is working in Victoria. People say that they hate it when they see Labor and Liberal and other parties carping at each other and opposing everything — with kneejerk reactions — that one party puts up and that the other side then automatically tries to tear down. Well, from my perspective it looks a lot scarier when they get together in an alliance, let me tell you. That is when the public ought to really be worried, when they see Labor and Liberal working together.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER — Well, you know, there are all sorts of alliances, but one thing we can rely on is Labor to implement the Liberal Party's policy, whatever form of relationship they might actually have. I thank Ms Shing for that interjection. I do appreciate being given the opportunity to make that aside.
Having made that rather provocative statement, I just want to assure the Leader of the Government I am going to work constructively with him to elucidate the changes. He did in his summing up actually talk about each amendment and what each amendment was intended to do, but I just want to spend a little bit of time talking about the amendments to the amendments as we go. The government has also provided us with a table. It is a kind of guide to each inquiry recommendation and the resulting proposed amendment. I am going to have to work back from that a little bit to work out which question I ask at each clause, so I appreciate the forbearance if it takes me a few minutes to formulate my questions and be clear about which amendments we are addressing at each time.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — In relation to clause 7, this is one of the set of clauses where the money from the port privatisation is allocated to infrastructure projects. During the committee of inquiry I repeatedly asked the sale proponents, and for that matter Treasury, what the economic benefit to Victoria was from the sale of the port of Melbourne. I do not think there was a single witness who was ready to elucidate how a privately run port would be better run and therefore provide a better economic outcome than a public port. I asked people, 'Will it be operational efficiencies? Will it be the allocation of investment capital? Do you believe the current port is gold plating its infrastructure? Do you believe the current port, in public hands, is underinvesting?'. There was practically nothing put up by any witness that suggested that they had a specific criticism of the current port operator that allowed them to then ask for an improvement.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER — It is good that Mr Mulino is at the table, because he is helping me out. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and for that matter the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, asserted that private is simply better than public. But I asked all those witnesses to put forward a specific instance of something that the current operators are not doing that it ought to be doing or that it cannot do — that only a private operator can do — and no-one came up with anything. There was not a single piece of evidence put forward. It was the first question I put to the first witness group, which was Treasury, and they were actually quite open and frank about it. To paraphrase, they said, 'It's not about that. It's about getting some money which we can then invest in infrastructure and that that infrastructure investment might provide an economic benefit to the state'.
Mr Mulino, who is sitting there in some kind of role to assist the government, is shaking his head. If he wants to pull out the transcript and show me where I am wrong, he should feel free to do so. But as far as I took it from both Treasury and anybody else who cared to engage with the question, the answer to my question was that we will get some money from the port sale and we will invest that in other infrastructure and that that infrastructure investment is the thing that will improve the economic wellbeing of Victoria.
Since this clause is about where the money will be spent, I just have a couple of questions for the government on that. I am not seeing in this clause in the bill, in the amendments that have been put forward or in the amended amendments that have been provided this morning where infrastructure has a specific definition. So my question is: what is the definition of infrastructure? In other words, what is the range of things that the port sale proceeds could be spent on?
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr Barber — We agree on that.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr Barber interjected.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — I am not sure why the Leader of the Government stood up to contend with what I said, because he has ended up simply confirming it. The minister at the table cannot name a port operational efficiency that will occur under a private owner that cannot occur under a public owner. He referred to a quantum leap in public transport operations — —
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER — Let us tease it out a little bit more then; I have time. This is what I am paid to do. There may be a quantum leap in public transport operations, but the minister cannot assure me that there is going to be a quantum leap in port operations, and that would have been the first question that anybody asked when they approached the port, which after all is a very strategic asset for our economic future, particularly in relation to our export industries, not the least of which is food, commodities and manufacturing for food products. So in fact it is simply down to the minister's faith in the invisible hand of the market and the once-every-five-year intervention of the ESC through this amazing building block method that has worked so well in relation to electricity poles and wires that we are now going to impose it on the even more complex area of our export facility.
But my question was quite specific, and it was about the definition of infrastructure in the bill. Clause 15(1) says:
There must be paid out of the Victorian Transport Fund —
(a) amounts authorised by the Treasurer to fund the cost of all or any part of the development of —
(i) the Level Crossing Removal Program; and
(ii) infrastructure projects for or in relation to public transport, roads, rail, the movement of freight, ports or other infrastructure …
So first of all, the level crossing removal program is not actually defined in the bill. Mr Jennings says it is the 50 level crossings — the ones they sort of picked out of a hat when they were in opposition — but that term, level crossing removal program, is not defined. It does not say there are 50, and it does not say which ones they are. In fact the earlier line says that it could be all or any part — that is, the proceeds might go to part of the government's 50 program or it might go to all. But it might also go to part, which means the other part could be funded somewhere else.
Clause 15 also talks about the funding of 'infrastructure projects', which are described as transport projects, or 'other infrastructure' — and other infrastructure could mean pretty much anything the government wants it to. We know every parrot in the pet shop is out there talking about infrastructure every day of the week, but they are often talking about a lot of different things. They could be talking about energy infrastructure or they could be talking about community infrastructure. If they wanted to, they could talk about libraries, footpaths and swimming pools.
We are establishing a great big fund here in the same way previous governments have established large regional funds — large pools of money from which they can draw — and as we know over time the money that gets drawn down from those funds tends to be for the things that, let us just say, have high political paybacks. It is not always incredibly clear that they have the best rate of return, particularly when you are comparing apples and oranges. The government is probably going to get up in a minute and say, 'Well, we've got Infrastructure Victoria; we're going to do all that', but I just wanted to give the government a chance to say whether clause 7 ensures that all of the money from this will go to the government's list of 50 crossings, which has been the commentary up until now. The problem is clause 7 does not in fact ensure that that happens.
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — Clause 10 is an area where there have been amendments to the amendments — that is, there have been some changes in what has been provided to me and other MPs this morning. Could the minister briefly outline what has changed in this section since the amendment was circulated during the last sitting week?
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — The government is correct, and this is the difficulty I am labouring under, having just received a new set of amendments. It is in fact amendment 10 which inserts new clauses. There have been some changes to that provision rather than to clause 10 — that is right.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER — Correct. The information I gave to the clerks just before was erroneous. It is actually amendments 10, 24 and 28 that I am interested in, rather than those clauses.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — If I can just ask the government to explain: is this the amendment that was tabled at the end of last sitting week, or is this an amendment to an amendment, or is this a new amendment?
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — I thank the government for that. Now, did I also understand along the way there that the investment in infrastructure can also occur in private infrastructure — that would mean privately owned?
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — Yes, but it is prohibited to invest public money into privately owned infrastructure — not for private use, but publicly used privately owned infrastructure? Is that permitted within the terms of what has just been put forward here?
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — Well, lots of infrastructure is privately owned. There are privately owned toll roads that people drive on; there are privately owned water treatment plants that provide water that is for public use. In an earlier clause we already established that infrastructure in this bill means either the level crossings program or public transport infrastructure or other infrastructure. And if there is an additional third category which is 'other infrastructure', that can mean a lot of things. Listening to that earlier clause, and the one that the government just described, it would be possible for other infrastructure to encapsulate privately owned ski chairlifts in the alpine resort under the definitions and the clauses that I have just heard.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — I am uninterested in the government's intention, because this is legislation that is going to roll out for many years to come. I am interested in the black letter of the law. I must have read 1000 times in the media that we are selling the port to remove level crossings.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER — We are privatising the port, and even the government, when it spoke up before, did not say private would run it better; it was simply a financing question. This has always been a financing question.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER — Blimey, now you are really going out there. The electorate understood that this was not about a better port; this was simply a way to get $5 billion, $6 billion, $7 billion or $8 billion. Well, if it was a financing question, that should have been the discussion up-front, and I agree it was simply about a way of getting some more money. When the possible poor competitive outcomes for the port and for exporters were raised, the government has been going back and retrofitting and tacking on and reconsidering and adding belts and braces, and seatbelts and airbags, to try to make sure that a monopolist cannot be too monopolistic. It is to the credit of the opposition that from the position of the opposition it at least understood that and started working its way through the issues. That is the beauty of select committees and public debate. But if there is something in this legislation that would prohibit the money from the port being used for privately owned ski chairlifts in the alpine resorts, can the government please simply stand up and say, 'No, that could never happen under this law'.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr Barber — He prefers promises to be kept.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — If I can be of assistance to the house, particularly in relation to the history, on 2 August 2015 the government released a press release headed '$200M fund to support farmers from paddock to port'. I think members will probably remember the announcement. That was one where Ms Shing got to feed a poddy calf. It was possibly the first time she got to feed a poddy calf. It was possibly the first time she had met a poddy calf. The press release says the Andrews government:
… will establish a new $200 million Agriculture Infrastructure and Jobs Fund to drive economic growth, create jobs —
blah, blah, blah, blah.
Further down it mentions 'Peter Tuohey', 'a farm in Bunyip', 'established following the successful passage', and then it says:
The new $200 million fund will support investment in agricultural infrastructure and supply chains to boost productivity, increase exports and reduce costs so our farmers, businesses and industries can stay competitive.
And this is the key bit:
It will be available for practical projects and programs that wholly benefit the agriculture sector, including transport, irrigation and energy projects as well as skills development programs and market access campaigns.
My earlier questions were about the scope of the fund and the words 'or other infrastructure' and what that might encompass. I never got a really clear answer about what 'infrastructure' means, but if the commitments in this press release are delivered as the government says they will be, then the bill must, one would hope, provide provision for the money to be spent on things such as irrigation, energy projects, solar panels, wind farms, pumped hydro schemes, skills development programs — maybe it is an injection into the TAFE budget; I do not know — and market access campaigns, which I think could encompass almost anything one could imagine.
I think Mr Drum is quite appropriately asking whether the 2 August 2015 promises encompassing a whole range of activities are actually coming in under the definition of the bill, which is that section containing the words 'or other infrastructure'.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr Barber — They want to shrink the pie and carve themselves a bigger slice.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — Just in terms of commitments that have been made previously, it is important that we understand what is permitted in this fund. I understand that we will eventually know after the fact what the money was spent on, but the Auditor-General of course has in the past reviewed these funds, and one of the questions the Auditor-General will ask is the legal basis on which this is fund established. It is this legislation that establishes the fund, and it is clause 15 that says what the fund can be spent on. It will be necessary for the Auditor-General to compare the legislation to the actual things.
Ms Lovell would like to know about a couple of things, but also at the time of the government's announcement about the $200 million fund, which the government has confirmed is now part of the new legislated fund, some other announcements were made. For example, there was a press release on the same day in which the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, who is also the Minister for Ports, Luke Donnellan, joined the member for Geelong in the Assembly, Christine Couzens, on the Princes Freeway in Lara to review a freight assessment plan VicRoads has undertaken that looks to improve high-productivity freight vehicle access between Geelong and the port of Melbourne. Then it says:
The new $200 million fund which will be established following the successful passage of the port of Melbourne lease legislation —
which is today —
through the Parliament will enable key freight routes such as the Princes Freeway to be upgraded to accommodate heavier vehicles and boost productivity.
It then goes on to say they have already fast-tracked money for strengthening 48 bridges. A variation on that press release was about the $200 million fund to support farmers in western Victoria It says:
Minister for Agriculture Jaala Pulford and member for Buninyong Geoff Howard today joined Windermere farmer Lyle Powell, to discuss the new fund, which will be established following the successful passage —
blah, blah, blah.
Inspecting the Powell's cattle underpass, Ms Pulford said projects like cattle underpasses would be considered by the new fund, which will support investment in agricultural infrastructure and supply chains to boost productivity …
This other paragraph, which I think adds to the debate, says:
It will be available for practical projects and programs that wholly benefit the agriculture sector …
Eligible applicants will include farm businesses, industry and agribusiness organisations, asset owners such as water authorities and local government.
So if this press release is to be believed, then that is really confirmation that money from this fund could go not only to private infrastructure used by the public but also to farm businesses and industry, meaning factories or processing plants, and unfortunately my reading of the bill as it stands is that that would be illegal. It would be illegal to provide money to those private businesses through the fund, unless the minister at the table can tell me I am reading it wrongly.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — The press release from 3 August says the money for the $200 million fund could go to 'farm businesses, industry and agribusiness organisations'. They are described as 'eligible applicants' in the 3 August press release.
I want to know: when this bill passes is it still the case they are eligible applicants to receive money from the fund that is set up under clause 15 with the new amendments and so forth that have been changed?
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — But it is not about the government's intentions; it is about what the legislation provides for, and I want to know — referring to the press release of 2 August saying that eligible applicants would include farm businesses, industry and agribusiness organisations — would they still be eligible? Because when I asked about the example of the private ski lift on the alpine resort, the minister said, 'No, that is not the government's intention'; I did not get an answer as to whether it would be authorised by the bill. But now people will want to know — the Victorian Farmers Federation (VFF) will want to know, the coalition will want to know, agribusinesses and farm businesses will want to know — if the vote we take today allocates funds that they would be eligible to apply for, provided they are applying for infrastructure.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — Yes, but this press release also talks about energy projects, and energy projects are not linked to port and freight, so is the original press release still accurate — that energy projects could apply for money from this fund?
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — This is a very important clause. The proposed port rail shuttle has been talked about publicly. It has been modelled and designed by at least one private group that is seeking to build and/or operate the port rail shuttle. It has the potential to take thousands of trucks off our freeways every year — hundreds of thousands over a year or more — and in fact in the process declog the city, get trucks out of local streets, improve the supply chain, cut greenhouse gas emissions and remove from our city a great deal of polluting diesel, which according to the World Health Organisation is now a known carcinogen.
The government has suggested that the recommendation of the committee was that it progress the port rail shuttle and that that has been acquitted with these amendments. In fact the committee went a lot further than that. Recommendation 4 of the committee of inquiry, under the heading 'Competitiveness of the port of Melbourne, supply chains and cost effects', is that:
The government:
(a) immediately commit to completing the port rail shuttle project for which funding of $58 million was provided in the 2014–15 budget
(b) immediately reactivate the expressions of interest process to select a party to deliver the port rail shuttle project
(c) ensure that the short-term delivery of the port rail shuttle project is fully reflected in the transaction documents.
Now this amendment does not do that. It does not reactivate, nor will the government reactivate, the expressions of interest process, nor is there an immediate commitment to completing the port rail shuttle project. In fact what it does is give the government and the new private operator, whenever they eventually take over, three years to develop a strategy which must contain elements that are to be delivered within five years, and one of those must be the port rail shuttle — in other words, an eight-year or more time line. It is a plan to have a plan. It is not a commitment to the port rail shuttle. People should be aware of that.
This was a recommendation of the parliamentary inquiry that the coalition itself supported and that has not been delivered in its negotiations with the government. The port rail shuttle has been pushed off into the never-never, and in that time the port will continue to expand, which means we will see a continuous increase in the number of trucks coming into the inner city and, for that matter, operating from the suburbs — the major logistics centres that the rail shuttle would have serviced — and with broader implications even on the carriage of other commodities and on impacts on country roads as well.
It will be a major disappointment to the Public Transport Users Association, to the Maribyrnong Truck Action Group and to anybody else who understands these things that the coalition did not take the opportunity afforded to it by the holding up of this legislation to get us a rock-solid guarantee that this project will be built and that it will be built soon. It can be built soon.
The committee was given a large amount of information that had been done as a result of previous studies by other groups that have considered building this project themselves and even operating it. There were discussions about the open access regime that would apply to it, but the fact is that I believe some stevedores and certainly some parts of the transport bureaucracy have been trying to put the kybosh on this project for a very long time.
That is why the $58 million that the government informs us is still in the budget has in fact been in the budget for quite a number of years now, and I suspect that, unless the federal government withdraws it, it will probably sit there for another three years or another five years or however long it might take.
Now I do have one particular question of clarification for the government on this. It is one point of clarification on the functioning of this section. Under the earlier amendment to clause 15, which is when I first tried to get involved in this matter, the purposes to which the port proceeds can be put are being expanded using clause 15. What it said there was:
… rail infrastructure projects for improving rail access, including any rail infrastructure project for improving access identified as an option in a Rail Access Strategy prepared under Part 6C of the Port Management Act 1995 …
That is the part 6C that we are now inserting. Does this not mean that the new operator of the port can in fact get the money to build rail access to the port from the proceeds of the sale?
In other words, for a project or at least a part of a project that is to the operator's benefit, that allows them to increase the capacity of the port and that would have been normally considered part of their cost base, which would have been established through the other processes of this bill — the building-block approach and all the rest of it — having now paid us the money to buy the port, they can come back to us and say, 'Can I have some of that money back, please? I would now like to build a rail shuttle on my own land, which will be to my own benefit'. So my question of clarification to the minister is just on that one point — that the rail shuttle, or at least the bits that might apply on their land, can in fact be funded out of the proceeds of this and therefore the operator themselves might not have to offer up anything on their side of the bargain to get the port rail shuttle operating.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — It is too late for Mr Ondarchie and coalition MPs to start coming in here and asking questions about the port rail shuttle and when is it going to happen because they were in the box seat. They had the ability to hold up this bill until they achieved the outcome they wanted, which is what the inquiry said — we should reopen the expressions of interest process immediately. That might mean it is eight years until we get any significant investment in rail carrying capacity into the port. That is eight years when Mr Ondarchie will be seeing trucks roaring down Rosanna Road and down High Street, Preston, and out in Mr Finn's electorate in the west and on any freeway that we are on and on any roads down to the south-east if the local roads are choked with trucks in electorates in the areas of Cranbourne and Narre Warren and right through to the inner city as well — from Richmond, Sydney Road in Brunswick and the Tullamarine Freeway. Trucks are going to get worse and worse and worse and worse. As a result of the coalition caving in on this particular recommendation today, it could be another eight years before we see any kind of progress. It is too late to be crying crocodile tears about air pollution from this point onwards. Opposition members had their chance. They blew it. There still has been no satisfactory explanation as to why the coalition wimped out so badly on this most critical issue.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr Barber — You're on.
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