Transcript - radio interview - ABC Gippsland (Sale), Breakfast with Mim Hook | Ministers for the Department of Infrastructure

E&OE

MIM HOOK [HOST]: Let's bring Catherine King, Minister for Infrastructure for the federal government, into the conversation. We're speaking today, you're on ABC Gippsland with Mim at 17 minutes past 7 about the infrastructure review that's been announced by the federal government. Good morning, Catherine King.

CATHERINE KING [MINISTER]: Good morning. Good to be with you.

MIM HOOK: Now, our local member here, Mr Darren Chester, has said that he's tried to contact your office. He's written you six letters without response and the content of those letters was wondering about this $60m for Princes Highway upgrade in Gippsland. Are you ready to give a response now, Catherine?

CATHERINE KING: Sure. Well, I actually have responded to Darren, so I'm not sure where those letters have gone astray, but I have signed letters, I've seen them across my desk and I've signed them. So, we'll chase that up for him today. And he's also, I run clinics every Wednesday of sitting weeks and Darren's welcome and has come to one of those. He's welcome to come to any single one of those. I make myself available to National Party members, Liberal Party members, crossbenchers and Labor Party members every second Wednesday of sitting weeks. So, I sit there with my department secretary and we go through that. So, Darren's always welcome and the door is open for that and we'll chase down where those letters are. But really, what is identified is actually part of the problem that I am dealing with, these sort of unallocated buckets that were largely given to Liberal and National Party seats to say, "right, you can have some money for these particular projects". State government, 80 per cent funded by the Commonwealth often. State governments reluctant to put their hands in their pockets as well on some of the projects and they've been sitting in the budget for often years and are simply unable to be delivered, or by the time we get the actual bill from the state governments who are of course responsible for building these, they are often triple the amount of money that's been allocated.

And the problem I've got is that we've got $120bn 10 year rolling pipeline that has been actually over promised and underfunded. And in order to actually deliver projects, I've got to be able to create headroom in order to actually find the extra money needed to build these projects, but also get rid of some of those projects that are simply never going to be delivered. Now, I'm not particularly targeting small or large projects. What I am saying is that from the Commonwealth's point of view, we've got to be able to look at what are those nation building projects that the Commonwealth needs to be responsible for; keeping our freight moving across the country, making sure our freight rail network is upgraded properly, making sure we can get goods and services to the regions and from the regions into our ports and out into the international market. I've got to make sure that the roads between our great capital cities and our great regions are safe and our rail networks are available -

MIM HOOK: Would include the $60m for the Princes Highway upgrade in Gippsland.

CATHERINE KING: I'm not actually going to speak about any specific project because that's the very nature of the review, is it's to look at every project that is not currently under construction, and that wasn't an election commitment in the last election campaign to actually look to see whether it's delivered, whether there's enough money available to work closely with state and territory governments to make sure we can actually get on with them. Part of the problem Darren, in fact, has identified of the delays is that we've got projects that were underfunded, they were announced before they were actually designed or there were any business cases for them or any cost benefit analysis done. And that is why you see years and years of inaction or sometimes failure of delivery of projects. This is a problem, frankly, that the National Party created by deciding they would use the infrastructure investment pipeline as an election announcement, as for election announcements, which is exactly what Darren has done in this case. Might be important projects, but he was very happy to, I'm sure, stand by those road intersections and pop those of that information in brochures and put media releases out. But when you don't do a business case, when you don't plan them properly, that is why these projects take so long.

MIM HOOK: We can't verify that at all. I'm sure Mr Chester would have something to say about that around the planning -

CATHERINE KING: Oh, I'm sure I've got some things to say about what Mr. Chester had to say as well.

MIM HOOK: Yeah, the planning he may have put into that. Look, when I look at what projects are happening for Gippsland with federal funding, there's a lot of funding going to wind farms here in Gippsland. It's really exciting for us, there's lots of jobs, people have questions as well. What about the basics just like having a really good Princes Highway and, and a really safe road to drive on.

CATHERINE KING: Exactly. That is the issue that I'm talking about. So, if the Commonwealth, so if you think about the levels of government and responsibilities of each of the levels of government, surely we want the Commonwealth government to be investing in those large highways, making sure that they are accessible and safe for both passenger cars and for our great important freight network.

MIM HOOK: The Princes Highway is our main road -

CATHERINE KING: Exactly. And that is what I'm saying. So, at the moment, there is no headroom. If you came to me and said, and the Victorian state government came and said they wanted a substantial amount of money to upgrade the Princes Highway, the previous government has left no money, no room in the infrastructure pipeline to fund any of those new projects. And that's what the review is looking at, is trying to make sure we get projects that are simply not able to be delivered out of the pipeline, so, we can do those big significant projects, like projects on the Princes Highway, like projects on the Hume, like projects on other highways and other freight networks across the country.

But having been left with a pipeline that has been frankly, if you look at it, when we last left office, there was 150 projects, big projects of national significance. We've now got a pipeline that is absolutely full of over 800 projects, some that were announced way back in 2016 that have simply not got a funding partner, not got any additional money to be able to actually build them. And that's what we've been left with. So, the review is to get independent advice right the way across the pipeline of projects to have a look at what can be delivered, what do we need to cancel. Because it simply cannot be delivered, or it's not got enough money to be able to be delivered so that there's headroom to fund those big scale projects that the Commonwealth should be funding rather than projects that local councils or state governments should be responsible for.

MIM HOOK: We look forward to hearing about the Princes Highway in the review. Thank you very much. Catherine King, Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development.