Transcript - radio interview - ABC Goulburn Murray

SANDRA MOON: And Catherine King, the Minister, Federal Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, is in the region today for the opening of the Beaconsfield bridge at Glenrowan. It’s the new overpass, or the redone overpass as part of the Inland Rail project, and so it’s higher to accommodate the double stacked freight trains. I spoke with Minister Catherine King earlier this morning.

CATHERINE KING: Well, this is a really significant project, being able to ensure that Inland Rail can have those double-stack trains, but also making sure that for the people of Glenrowan, you can still keep going about your business. And the new bridge really is a great amenity for the community. It’ll be terrific to be able to open that today. There’s a community day that also will be happening either later today, depending on the heat, or later in the week where people can actually walk across the bridge. You’ll get new views of the Glenrowan skyline and see more of the beautiful landscape around the town. But again, it’s part of four major projects that are happening through this region, through Barnawartha, North Wangaratta and Seymour Avenue Road, and Glenrowan itself. These are big works. And the thing that is really good about the work that we’re doing within land rail, is that the vast majority of workers are coming from the local community or from the state of Victoria, and it’s providing great opportunities for jobs and people on what is a really significant project that’s going to change the way freight moves around this country.

SANDRA MOON: It’s not been without controversy, though, just in terms of the aesthetics.

CATHERINE KING: Yeah. Big infrastructure projects, they are always hard, and change in the way in which infrastructure is built. It is always difficult. It’s often not without some controversy wherever you go. And that’s really what the planning schemes are designed, to try and work through those issues as best you can. I’m pleased that there’s been able to be, in the circumstances here. Obviously, there was an existing bridge. It was already going over the railway line. We obviously had to lift it up. People were concerned about what that would mean for views and skyline and amenity. And often what I think you find when these things are actually finally finished, people go, “actually, that’s pretty good.” We’ve done a good job, but they’re always difficult. And that’s really what the planning process is about, trying to sort those issues out.

SANDRA MOON: You mentioned the four other building works that are going on as well. There has been some talk as well, and I don’t know if this is sort of out of your purview, it might be more the Australian Rail Track Corporation, but concerns about some of those buildings around these areas that have some historic value.

CATHERINE KING: Yeah, well, I think they will be. The Australian Rail Track Corporation, obviously, is the Government Business Enterprise that is delivering Inland Rail. And so they are the proponent to some extent. So, they have to work through those things. Again, we know rail is an incredible story here in Australia, but it is old. We’ve got tracks that have been laid down sometimes 150 years ago. You have got sheds and sidings and all sorts of things that are of historic value. And again, the planning process has to work those things through sometimes. Obviously, safety also has to be at the prime as well, making sure that the sites that we’re building on and that the sites we’re building are safe. So, again, the planning process really is meant to sort all those things through. And I know often that can be difficult as you’re changing something that’s really been in place for sometimes 150 years, and that does mean we need to pay attention to the heritage aspects of those. But again, that’s really through the planning process and for ARTC to be sensitive to those issues as it’s going forward.

SANDRA MOON: Also, I know, and we continually get messages on this program from the decision last year. The community is still confused and worried about funding being pulled for the McKoy street overpass in Wodonga and the Rutherglen bypass, which remains a big issue for that township.

CATHERINE KING: Yeah, well, what I had to do and what I inherited from the previous government was an infrastructure investment pipeline of $120 billion that had been over-programmed. We couldn’t deliver it. It had been used, frankly, by the previous government to make a lot of announcements, a lot of press releases prior to any business cases being done. Prior to us understanding the costs of actual projects and what we did through the review is we found that in known cost overruns alone, in order for me to deliver just the things that were close in the pipeline, I would have needed to find another $31 billion to be able to deliver those.

Now, that was simply not feasible to do. So, we had to look through the recommendations of the review, look at those projects where really they had been under-costed and certainly underfunded, and make decisions about how we’re going to proceed to make sure I could deliver the pipeline that we had. So, there’s no reason that some of those projects may not come back into the pipeline later, but what they’ll need to be able to do is have business cases be properly costed.

If they’re over $250 million, they’ll need Infrastructure Australia to have had a look at them first, and they’ll also need the State Government to bring them forward as part of the budget processes. I know for many communities, and I represent the seat of Ballarat myself, and there’s projects that are important in our community as well. But in order to make sure we can deliver a pipeline within the funds that we’ve got available to us and actually build things, rather than just keep pushing them down the road a bit, it meant that I had to go through that review process, but no reason those projects can’t come back on later. But we’ll need to ensure we know how much they cost, that they stack up and that the State Government wants to bring them forward as part of the Federal Budget process.

SANDRA MOON: Minister, before I let you go, I know that you’re on your way to this official opening, but earlier this morning we did hear from the Federal Independent Member for Indi, Helen Haines, who is introducing a Private Members bill to stop pork barrelling in the Federal Government. What’s your take on that?

CATHERINE KING: Well, we’ve done a number of things that have ensured integrity, not just in grants processes, but the way in which government operates. And of course, the biggest of those has been the National Anti-Corruption Commission. That’s been a really significant reform in terms of we didn’t have one federally. It had been long opposed, frankly, by a lot of people, and that’s now in place. The other is we have reformed significantly the grants process, certainly in my own portfolio, and an example of that. When I came to government, I inherited a whole raft of grants that had gone, that simply weren’t being delivered because they, frankly had been announced during a political contest. They didn’t have proponents, there wasn’t any land to build them on. I had grants going back to 2016 and I’ve had to clean all that up and make sure that we’re able to deliver those.

We’ve also introduced two new grants programs, the Growing Regions Program, which is one of those. I’ve actually set up a panel, including, of which Helen Haines is on, to do the initial assessments of all of those. That panel is made up of members of the Labor party, the Liberal Party, National Party and Independence to try and take some of the sort of party politics out of it, but to provide that opportunity for communities to have those expressions of interest go through those, and we’re just going through the assessments of those. So, we’ve done a lot to clean up the grants process and to put integrity back into those systems, so that when people apply for a grant and communities apply for a grant, they know that they’re being assessed fairly, not on a colour coded spreadsheet, on the colour of who the politician happens to represent you in the federal parliament.

SANDRA MOON: Catherine King, who is the Minister, Federal Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government in the region today for the opening of the Beaconsfield bridge at Glenrowan, so no doubt there’ll be plenty of community activity.