Infrastructure coordinator accuses bureaucratic groups of sabotaging national economic future out of self-interest
June 26, 2013
National Infrastructure Coordinator Michael Deegan has all but accused bureaucratic elements of sabotaging the nation’s future economic performance out of self-interest.
In a scathing attack at the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) conference in Canberra yesterday, Deegan took to task “stolid, hesitant and reluctant” groups within state and federal public services that “have become inhibitors rather than facilitators”.
His withering critique centred on national coordination of roads and ports.
“Would it surprise you to know that in 2013 we have no national idea of the condition of our existing roads?” Deegan says
“Nationally, we don’t identify road routes where improvements would lead to an increase in national income.
“We don’t measure whether money spent on roads actually improves service performance.
“No one does these things.
“They simply don’t get done.
“In 2011, we sought to have governments start to manage the roads actively as a national portfolio.
“This was to treat and manage roads just like all other assets.
“Current condition would be measured.
“Funds for improvement would be allocated where industry and the community would gain the most.
“And the pattern of spending would be tracked to ensure the conditions improved over time.
“So, what has happened since with the nation’s independent advisor on road infrastructure made those recommendations?
“Nothing.”
Deegan, whose office supports Infrastructure Australia, effectively accused the groups of setting up what amounted to a shadow policy beyond political control.
“Another example of bureaucracy getting in the way of productivity and innovation of truly national significance is the proposed national freight network, identified in Infrastructure Australia’s first report to the Council of Australian Governments in 2008,” he says.
“Further detailed work was done in the land freight strategy reports in 2011 and 2012.
“The idea was, again, simple.
“Plan a network of roads and rail lines linking the major ports and industrial centres that grows as the network attracts major freight flows because it is designed to take the most productive vehicles.
“Give freight a chance to be planned and lower its cost to the users.
“The prime minister, premiers and ministers received our proposal enthusiastically. But the bureaucracy said no.
“The bureaucracy has devised its own vehicle for handing out money for roads and rail.
“Strategies are written about where the bureaucrats think the money should go, some people play with it at the margins, bringing in a political overlay, and the money goes out.
“In their wisdom, the bureaucrats’ vehicle omits Port Kembla in New South Wales, the Tullamarine Freeway in Victoria, several major ports in Western Australia and, perhaps most conspicuously, the world’s largest coal port in Newcastle.
“These are glaring omissions and no so-called designated network could survive without them.”
