Is Good Government Enough?

Transport and infrastructure are transforming city life in New South Wales – especially in the outer areas of western Sydney and the congested parts of inner Sydney. Disruption is part of this, but the new NSW Transport and Infrastructure minister The Hon Andrew Constance believes it’s a small price to pay for the huge benefits the changes will deliver to commuters and business. Andrew Constance addressed The Sydney Institute on Thursday 9 March 2017.

IS GOOD GOVERNMENT ENOUGH?

ANDREW CONSTANCE

There are a few things everyone in this room can agree on: we want people in government who reform, who kick the economy into gear and who get out of people’s lives. But with the changes we are seeing to the body politic – is this enough?

Does the average person want reform? Do they care about a budget that is in balance and a liberal approach to personal freedoms? Every man and his dog has an opinion on Trump, Brexit and, in our neck of the woods, Pauline Hanson. I believe politicians are ignorant if we think the rise of our generation’s “forgotten people” won’t influence the way we govern, and the way we head into an electoral cycle in 2019.

In 1942, Robert Menzies spoke about the forgotten people, “taken for granted by each political party in turn” – who make up the “backbone” of this great country. A generation later, another one of our country’s legendary prime ministers – John Howard – became an election-winning machine, not least because of the support of those called Howard’s battlers. Like Menzies’ forgotten people, these are ordinary mums and dads who work hard for everything they’ve got, and who want their children to have a better life than they had.

I mention these two junctures in our history not to say that “we’ve seen it all before”, because we have not. Both Menzies and Howard harnessed the aspirations of the many and delivered a better nation for your average family. Both of these giants of politics recognised growing movements of people disaffected by the political process, who could not see how governments were delivering for them.

It is true that we are seeing this again, but instead of cleaving to a centre right government, this time the disaffected are walking away from major parties. It’s a worry not just for Coalition governments, but for our Labor friends too. It is no longer enough to manage the economy, to deliver infrastructure, services, and tick all the boxes of what a good government is.

Our political representation and focus must be more granular – concerned with the everyday lives of those who elect us. We need to focus on the issues house by house, street by street, or village by village if need be. And listen to the feedback. Listen to what people need fixed in their local areas, respond when they say their school or hospital is run down – don’t kick it down the road when you see local infrastructure that needs to be upgraded. Good government means that building mega projects and local infrastructure should not be mutually exclusive.

As a government you are judged by how you manage major projects, and how you deliver local infrastructure While we should get granular with our politics to truly connect with people, we also shouldn’t be afraid to lead and take risks.

In state and federal systems, government intervention in people’s lives needs to be scaled back.Coalition governments should stick to their guns and not fall into the trap of over-regulation and dictating to our communities. We saw this last year with the greyhound decision.I consider myself lucky to be part of one of the best governments this state has ever seen. I can say that, and mean it – but we need to get better at seeing whether people feel they are actually benefiting from the state’s success.

By any measure, NSW is the envy of this nation. We have an infrastructure program of some $73 billion of which $41.5 billion has been dedicated to public transport and roads – and this expenditure is just in the next four years. We are a global sweet spot for infrastructure.

New South Wales transport cluster spending is more than that of every State and Territory combined. We are building mega projects like the Sydney Metro, Westconnex, Northconnex, Sydney Light Rail, Parramatta Light Rail, Newcastle Light Rail. The International Convention Centre – which will generate $5 billion for the economy alone- is already open for business. Our economy is in the black – the best in the nation by far.

My worry is that people will see this as the new norm – but it has not happened by accident. When we came to government, we made the conscious decision to recycle capital – to lease unproductive assets to the private sector and establish the infrastructure fund Restart NSW. And, most importantly, we explained to people why we were doing this, what we would spend their money on, and how the investment would improve their lives.

On average – people in this city spend more than one week of their lives in traffic each year – this is $5b a year in lost economic value to the state, let alone the social cost. We all pay the price for congestion, and our roads and transport infrastructure program is all about cutting down on this lost time, lost money and lost productivity. But every time I’m at home in Bega, this is not what people want to talk to me about.

Trump, the Brexit result and Hanson have all benefited from a political class that has spoken to itself for far too long. And the so-called age of entitlement, where a select few members of parliament use and abuse their entitlements is rightly shocking people, and playing right into the hands of parties like One Nation.

The thing that saddens me the most about this, though, is that those who stand to lose from the rank opportunism of minor parties are the very people who believe they are their saviours. In country NSW members of the community are those who stand to lose big if a party like Hanson’s is ever able to form a coalition. The protectionism around stopping foreign investment and walking away from free trade agreements would devastate our regional economies.

You go and tell the oyster farmers in a place like the far South Coast that they can’t sell to the Chinese anymore. You go and tell them that this is off limits because of a cheap political decision. Ten years ago, these farmers were selling oysters out of hessian bags for $6 a dozen on the side of the road. Now they’re flying overseas and their oysters are sold in five-star restaurants throughout Asia. Andy Baker is one of them: he’s an oyster farmer from Pambula who now sells his oysters for $13 each in Tokyo restaurants.

Anyone can play on the politics of prejudice – it’s the easiest thing in the world. But the unintended consequences of this will put people out of work, take food off the family table and lead to families losing their homes. You have parties genuinely wanting to whack up a wall and say no more foreign investment – like the ALP did in the last NSW election.

Why would we deny ourselves the opportunity to sell to the world by closing ourselves off from the world? To sell our products – we need buyers. When we came to government, there was more than a decade of severe underinvestment in infrastructure. And we need foreign investment and foreign interest.

In 16 years, our predecessors announced 12 transport projects – and only delivered half a rail line. Business confidence was at rock bottom, particularly after Public Private Partnerships like the Cross City tunnel, and Lane Cove tunnel, where projects went into administration because the government was not willing to form a proper partnership – a true partnership. We came to government with the state more than $14 billion in debt – projected to rise to $20 billion by 2020 – now we are in a cash positive position, not owing a single net cent in the general government sector.

Since 2011, more than 320,000 new jobs have been created in this state. That is better than every other state, and means families across NSW have the dignity of work, and the benefit of providing for their loved ones.

What I mean to say is, good government delivers tangible benefits. Benefits that a minor party, or one exploiting fear or prejudice, has no ability to deliver.

So, does good government sell? Maybe it does, but the art is in the telling. People are sick of politicians who just tell them the economy is great, we’re great, everything’s great – but can’t explain HOW what we are doing will make their lives better.

They are sick of governments who dictate, instead of listen. They are sick and tired of being talked down to – told they live in the lucky country, that the economy is going great guns, and they should just be happy with what they can get. All politicians – particularly those on the left – have got to stop treating people like they are stupid, that their opinions are worthless, and that it’s their own fault if they can’t see the fruits of a nation’s success.

In addition to changing the way we communicate to our communities, we need to think about the impact of our decisions. In NSW, maybe creating a hundred thousand jobs for the state is not as powerful as losing 50 in Campbelltown. Or spending billions on hospitals may not be as appreciated as an $80,000 a year nurse in Cobar. In Western Sydney – there is more politics around what is happening to Parramatta council’s swimming pool than the building of the $300 million Western Sydney Stadium. If we don’t get the strategy right on this, we stand to isolate the entire local community.

The importance of how we communicate to our communities is nowhere more clear than in rural and regional areas. The recent by-election in Orange is a case in point. Now, objectively, despite the greyhound decision – regional NSW is better off than it ever has been before. We are spending $8.8 billion on key infrastructure – bridges, roads, airports, hospitals and protecting our water security. Regional hospital upgrades – making up a whopping $2 billion in investment – have included the fast-tracked redevelopment of Lismore Hospital, a HealthOne facility in Coraki, and planning for hospitals in Taree, Macksville, Armidale and Grafton. Even Bega has a brand new hospital. It is the largest capital investment program in regional NSW in our State’s history.

Despite this, and despite a brilliant candidate, the community was under the impression we were governing for Sydney, and that all our funding was funnelled to Sydney projects. The environmental movement some time ago coined the phrase “think global, act local”.  Maybe it’s time we just think local first.

As transport and infrastructure minister, it’s my job to apply this to our massive building program – and the way in which we communicate it. We are very deliberately focusing on the great things being achieved in local infrastructure for that purpose. The appointment of former Australian Army Chief Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie today to drive delivery of infrastructure in regional NSW is another good step in this direction. He will be advising us on identifying any hold-ups to rolling out local infrastructure- and fixing any problems. He will ensure our regional projects are delivered as quickly as humanly possible by working closely with local communities, councils and industry groups.

Technology also presents a great opportunity to think local first, and apply the lessons on a wider scale. With our future transport roadmap, I want to see on-demand transport services right across this state. It’s regional and remote communities in particular who will benefit from on demand transport solutions tailored to them by locals – not dictated by central government.

It is about personalising service delivery. Our point to point transport reform opened up the entire market, and was an important step in changing transport to being about the customer first. A lot of people think we just legalised Uber – the first jurisdiction in the country to do so. But it is so much bigger than Uber. We got rid of more than 50 taxi and hire car regulations that restricted the industry’s ability to innovate.

For example, we had a ridiculous situation where taxi drivers were legally obliged to remain within three metres of their taxi at all times, they had to wait 15 minutes for a customer unless a different time was agreed, and by law every single Wheelchair Accessible taxi had to also carry a baby capsule. This was the type of prescriptive regulation that did nothing – except increase costs for operators and tell them how to run their own businesses. Now this was not an easy reform. It was a political minefield, but I learnt a very important lesson in the process.

Governments should not stick their head in the sand when smart technology emerges. We need to rise to the challenge, fix the legislative obstacles and get out of the way. In the end, it is the customer who wins.

I’ve said it many times, but transport IS a technology business. We are turning transport planning on its head thanks to the data provided by Opal. Thanks to this data – which gives us a picture of our services that was never possible before – we are going to be better able to plan where services need to be, and how we deliver them.

With congestion increasing and car ownership falling in some areas – such as the inner city – we can no longer think about transport planning the way we used to. NSW is undergoing unprecedented change and growth – this creates unique opportunities for us to apply new technologies and transform how we deliver roads and public transport to our customers. As the city grows, the way we move around also needs to change.

Take the transfer discount on Opal – this provides a financial incentive for switching modes of transport when you go from point A to point B. Already people are saving almost $800 a year and changing their travel choices because of this incentive.

We want people to interchange. But at the moment, we don’t have a real interconnected transport network: we have building blocks on building blocks but no real connectivity. Our projects are focused on filling in holes and missing links, because we are playing catch up to reach a properly interconnected network.

The advent of autonomous cars is something I am also really excited about – and which has the potential to revolutionise transport all over NSW. I’m working closely with my colleague, Roads Minister Melinda Pavey to have autonomous car trials up and running sooner rather than later.

Having intelligent transport networks managed by data is vital to this working properly. Data volunteered by customers, demand-aggregation platforms, autonomous vehicles and other sources will be combined with digitising our own networks to ensure transport is ready to support the next generation of intelligent vehicles and services.

With Sydney Metro, the country’s biggest public transport project, it’s my job to reiterate until I’m blue in the face the very real benefit this will have for everyone who relies on public transport to get to and from work: A fully automated train, a turn up and go service, trains every four minutes in the peak moving up to 46,000 people per hour. Connecting north west and south west Sydney through the city.

Then there’s our Transport Access Program – which basically means, if your station is old and run down and doesn’t have a lift- we will upgrade it. There are more than 150 stations in NSW that are now accessible. And we have completed a total of 450 projects to improve the amenity and access to local train stations. So far more than 80 per cent of passengers use stations which are fully accessible, BUT that’s not much comfort if your station is not one of them. This in particular, while it has significant investment behind it – $890 million over four years – is something that has a very real impact on how someone lives their life. As a former Ageing and Disability Services minister, it’s important to me that if you have limited mobility, you’re not excluded from anything – that includes catching public transport.

These are just some projects in my portfolio that are examples of where good government has been delivered in conjunction with explaining the benefits to communities. Where we have explained how we are taking the prosperity of this state and using it to better the lives of ordinary people.

Minor parties may one day be able to win general elections. But will they be able to deliver a budget? Build hospitals, roads and transport projects? This is the key here – we need to recast the debate, what good is a politician who taps into fear, if they can’t deliver a single thing the community needs. Good government, in countering the anti-establishment political reaction in the longer term can only be met by politicians willing to take risks. Who are willing to put their own careers on the line to get the best outcome and best reform possible. But there is no point unless you bring people with you. This is what we did with the long term lease of poles and wires.

The federal government should be taking risks for reforms the community would see tangible benefits from – in the same way this government walked the talk and leased the electricity poles and wires. Taking this risk meant we were able to promise an unprecedented $20 billion in projects that are funded and is being delivered. We faced ongoing baseless attacks from Labor over this – outright lies about electricity prices going up, people losing jobs, and racist campaigns about China buying our assets. But in the end, the community was convinced that the leasing of the distribution and transmission businesses was the right thing to do, unlocking $20 billion for projects that would transform the state – which had been promised for decades, but which are now funded, and being built before their eyes. This is why I urge the federal government to get on with IR, tax, and federation reforms to improve our national productivity.

There is too much of the politics of survival and self interest, which is when minor parties take a hold. And too many politicians are behaving in a way that fails the pub test.

One Nation is set to poll 15-20 per cent in the next couple of election cycles, in some areas this means there could be a member of parliament elected with a primary vote of less than 30 per cent. Unless we sell the benefits of good government – the ability to get results and improve lives while creating jobs and building infrastructure, everyone in our community stands to lose. Not least those from country areas.

The effect of optional preferential voting means One Nation poses a risk to both Labor and the Coalition parties. Labor could lose votes in western Sydney, in the regions and it’s us who stand to bleed votes.

There is the very real risk that the One Nation vote overall will benefit Labor in an optional preferential voting system.

Good government is something worth aspiring to. But its worth is measured only by the results you get for people in their communities.