In politics, the facts always catch up with you.
That’s what has happened to the Turnbull Government on the issue of investment on railways, roads, ports and other infrastructure.
For more than three years, the Government has claimed to have been delivering record infrastructure investment.
Indeed, in an Orwellian lead-up to this year’s federal election, it raided the budget that was meant to build infrastructure for $18 million to fund a television and newspaper propaganda campaign to press this false claim.
But the facts have caught up.
Figures confirmed at Senate Estimates Committee hearings last week show that in the 2015-16 financial year, the Government invested $5.5 billion on transport infrastructure.
That is $2.5 billion less than the $8 billion it promised in its infamous 2014 Budget.
And because the figure was pumped up by a $490 million payment to the Western Australian Government as GST compensation, the cut was closer to $3 billion – or more than 35 per cent less than what was actually promised.
That followed a $1 billion cut from the previous financial year, again on the Government’s own Budget projections.
These cuts have been achieved through a mixture of cancelling some projects, deferring others and slowing down the pace of major ongoing projects.
The incoming Coalition Government scrapped public transport projects like the Melbourne Metro and Brisbane’s Cross River Rail and delayed commencement of projects like Melbourne’s M80 upgrade and Adelaide’s South Road project.
It has also slowed the pace of investment in the important upgrades of the Bruce and Pacific highways.
As a result, communities all over Australia that need more public transport and better roads are missing out.
The damage caused by these cuts goes further than the lack of delivery of individual projects.
Inadequate infrastructure investment is damaging the economy.
Construction is a great driver of economic activity. That is why economic growth was strong during the investment stage of the mining boom.
But now mining has moved from the investment phase to the production phase.
In response, we need to create new industries and boost existing industries to make up for the drop-off in activity.
Investing in the right infrastructure projects has the immediate short-term effect of sustaining economic activity and creating jobs.
Over the longer term, it makes the economy more productive, which sets up further jobs growth and promotes future prosperity.
The role of government in stimulating the economy through infrastructure investment is even more important given recent comments by two governors of the Reserve Bank.
In recent speeches former chairman Glenn Stevens and his successor Philip Lowe have made the point that lowering interest rates, which is their job, can only go so far when it comes to stimulating the economy.
With interest rates at historic lows, the Government must do what it can to drive economic activity.
Yet it is now beyond doubt that it has reduced investment.
You don’t create jobs and economic growth by promising to build infrastructure.
You actually have to build it.
And if you want to create new industries by focusing on innovation, you need to invest in the infrastructure that will allow those new industries to get their products to market.
The other economic flaw in cutting infrastructure investment in the current economic climate is that we need to tackle the worsening problem of traffic congestion.
Infrastructure Australia has warned that without action now, traffic congestion will cost the economy $53 billion a year by 2031.
It’s is already eroding the quality of life of millions of Australians.
We need to act by building more public transport and better roads.
But in the recent election campaign the Government funded no new public transport projects.
Even worse, Budget forward estimates show that commonwealth investment in rail infrastructure will decline every year between now and 2019-20, at which time it will hit zero.
Not a dollar.
We have to do better.
Anthony Albanese is the Member for Grayndler and Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Cities and Regional Development.
