Mr HATTON (5:09 PM) —I wish today to speak about the infrastructure needs of rural and regional Australia and, included within that, of the Sydney Basin. Recently there was a report produced by the Sydney Committee entitled Sydney's gateways in the 21st century. That is one of a series of reports that have gone into the issue of a second airport for Sydney. This report goes further and not only looks at the infrastructure needs of Sydney in terms of an airport gateway, the need for a second airport for Sydney and the timing of that second airport but also looks at Sydney's port facilities—in particular, at Port Botany—and the fact that we are only five to seven years out from Port Botany reaching completion and being unable to provide access for any further container movement.

Both of these things—the question of the future of Port Botany and the movement of containers from Port Botany through to Sydney and out into the rest of New South Wales, and the question of Kingsford Smith airport and a second airport for Sydney—are major infrastructure needs for the city of Sydney and the surrounding region. Likewise we have had parliamentary reports into transport indicating that the most sensible thing that one could do in terms of fixing up the rail lines would be to spend about $600 million dealing with the great problems that freight trains running from Brisbane to Melbourne have in getting through Sydney.

I am pleased to see that the minister for transport recently announced some moves to address those problems within Sydney, in order to get those trains through, but it only partly answers the great problem of freight movements down the eastern seaboard—and that compounds, of course, when you think of the freight coming into Sydney (Kingsford Smith) Airport and the freight coming in through Port Botany. We need better transport links. We need to plan for the future. The federal government, linking with the states and the shires, needs to be involved in infrastructure development if Australia is to fully develop economically and if Australia is to have a balanced development.

Further, recently in the past six months or so I have been with a number of my colleagues to rural and regional seats—to Kirsten Livermore's seat of Capricornia, to the seat of McEwen in concert with our candidate Andrew Macleod, and most recently with Steve Whan to Eden-Monaro. What was most evident in the discussions with people in the development associations in those seats and also in discussions with the shire councils was that people in rural and regional Australia are heartily sick of yet more studies about what their problems are. They know that there should be concrete investment in their infrastructure. They know and understand that, for years now, they have been called upon to make their determinations as to what their priorities are. But all they have had from the federal government, in large part—and we saw that with the bush summit—was that it was a wonderful thing for them if they were actually able to get their plans together and somehow to go about making sure those plans came to reality, but that they should not come knocking on the door of the federal government in order to ensure that that took place. The model effectively is a self-help one: you organise the plan and you find out a way to actually fund it.

What is apparent within McEwen and Eden-Monaro, and also in the seat of Capricornia, is that the work done—and it is differential over those three seats—has been substantial. The local people know and understand what their economic and social problems are. They have a fundamental understanding of the fact that funding to local government and to shires has declined over the past number of years, particularly since 1996. Where they had expected two per cent of funding out of the federal budget, it has now declined to 1.4 per cent. Their problems have grown greater. The resources with which they attempt to deal with those have grown, relatively, much less. From one end of Australia to the other, local councils have enormous difficulty dealing with their local road programs. One council after another stressed that great problem. It is even made greater when their local work gangs are supplanted by state crews. That has an absolutely negative effect for those people who lose their jobs with the shire councils.

But just as those local councils have a range of problems, they also have come up with a range of solutions. They do not want the federal government to say to them, `Give us another set of studies.' They do not want the federal government to send in another ream of consultants to discuss with them what they might need and what needs to be done. They would like the federal government to actually front up and start supporting rural Australia in the infrastructure needs that it has.

Four years down the track from 1996, what indication have we had from the federal government that it has finally woken up to the fact that there is a great need here? It is going to come up with a policy, I think it is called regional solutions, for which there will be $90 million over four years. Unfortunately, $90 million over four years does not spread very far when in the Bowen-Collinsville region they have a number of projects of great significance. The Urannah Dam, for instance, has a cost of about $149 million. The Elliott main channel is roughly of an equivalent amount. Both of those viewed simply in terms of their dollar amounts indicate a fairly large amount of expenditure.

But from most of the academic work done in this area and the practical indication of the benefits that have been taken into account, we know that for every one dollar invested in infrastructure where it is well invested there is a $4 return to the community—not just in the construction stage but also in the ongoing operational stage. Not only are there those two projects in Bowen-Collinsville, but there is also the missing Newlands-Goonyella link of the minefield rail links and the question of building a new terminal at Abbott Point to get more coal out of that area. All of those things cannot be achieved, cannot be got up by the local shires and the local community groups identifying their needs and then handing around the hat on a Saturday afternoon at the races. They cannot just be done out of the resources of the shire councils as depleted and degenerated as they are. They cannot just be done through the state governments. These are projects that need federal government intervention and decision and a federal government commitment that is much greater than $90 million over four years.

One very simple thing concerns the town of Namadgi in the seat of McEwen. There is a local issue there in relation to Kirwans Bridge. That bridge is a wooden structure, undergirded by steel. It was built in 1890. In 1956 it was renewed. It has now come to the end of its effective life. It requires about $400,000 to be spent. The alternative is to do up the local road at the back where you would end up with a 20-minute trip into town instead of one of five minutes across Kirwans Bridge. That would cost more than double what the infrastructure costs are for Kirwans Bridge. The local shire council is not capable of providing the money itself. It has made approaches to the federal government, but so far it has got nowhere. This is an important piece of infrastructure for Namadgi, for the seat of McEwen, which by its very nature has no large central population centres. It is important that the people on both sides of the river are able to get access in order to develop their products and get them out to market and to enjoy all of the normal social benefits one would have by having close access to the town.

It was evident throughout the trips, but particularly throughout the seat of McEwen, that people had a number of things to say to us that were important: first, that the whole question of road funding needs to be addressed to make better use of the rate and tax payer's dollar; second, that Telstra must stay in public hands, and the whole question of the cost of communications for regional areas has to be considered; third, that jobs are vital to keep the regions healthy and self-supporting, and we need to stop as much as possible the outmigration of people and skills; fourth, that the fuel price differentials between city and country need to be addressed urgently; and five, that more encouragement and protection need to be given to the whole question of research and development in country areas—and I have linked to that the whole question of local educational facilities. The question of Australia's infrastructure development in rural areas is crucial. (Time expired)