SHADOW MINISTER FOR INFRASTRUCTURE, TRANSPORT AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT – Senator, the Hon Bridget McKenzie, Address to the AFR Infrastructure Summit – Pullman Hotel, Sydney, 13th November, 2025
SPEECH TRANSCRIPT
E&OE…
BRIDGET MCKENZIE
Thanks to the Australian Financial Review. It is fantastic to get everybody that’s passionate about infrastructure in our wide brown land, in the same room.
There’s a maxim in politics that the worst day in Government is better than your best day in Opposition.
It’s said mostly as a motivator for those of us who are in Opposition to work harder for the things that really matter to the people we care about in this country.
I agree, Opposition sucks, but the reality is more sobering.
Having been at the most senior levels of government, sat around the Cabinet table and the Expenditure Review Committee of government where the serious decisions are made on a daily basis on how to run a country.
I think government is also very, very tough.
In government you’re more often corralled into choices between the unpalatable and the even more unpalatable, between the inedible sandwich and the even more inedible sandwich … between populist decisions like subsidizing power bills and propping up smelters, and seemingly unpopular decisions like developing an energy plan that works and is better for the long-term national prosperity and security.
Sugar hits, like non-means tested 5% deposit on home loans, are nice-to-make decisions in government.
The harder ones are like telling our university vice-chancellors to build accommodation for the hundreds of thousands of international students that they’ve built their entire business models around that are now competing in a very hot housing market.
In truth, Opposition, when done properly, does give you the space to really think about long-term policies away from the hurly burly of being a minister.
That’s why days like today are really, really important.
It gets key stakeholders in the room to discuss issues of national interest outside political time frames, because being in a party of government like the minister (Catherine King) you heard from earlier this morning, myself and my Liberal Party colleagues … there’s only three parties of government in our country.
You have to act in the national interest, not just on what your specific local electorate thinks is the right thing to do at a given point in time, or what your populist political ideology from either the far left or the far right tells you to do in any given moment of time.
The meta shift in infrastructure going on right now involves winding back the focus on traditional infrastructure, like tunnels, like big road builds and the rail needed to accommodate the growing population and maintain freight efficiency (this shift is going) towards renewables and electrification.
This analysis, as we can see of forward infrastructure expenditure, shows that planned road investment nationally craters from 2027, more than halving over three years from $5.8 billion per quarter, down to $2.2 billion in 2029.
On the other hand, by the end of the decade, investment in vital energy infrastructure projects peaks at over $20 billion a quarter – triple the current investment.
This shift in private and public investment is going to suck up workforce and resources away from other necessary infrastructure you need to run a prosperous G20 economy and country like ours.
In this sense, the Anthony Albanese has literally put all its economic hopes and dreams into a 100% renewable story at the expense of conventional but very boring efforts required to improve productivity, planning and infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the demand to move the freight and the people doesn’t go away, nor does the need for ancillary services to sustain what are now high standards in health care, education and aged care that we all take for granted.
I’m here to say that the challenge in front of us is far greater than the current Federal Government is actually admitting.
The whole of the national infrastructure task is messy. If we look to the national freight task alone, Australia’s freight requirements are projected to increase by 26% to 2050, from $765 billion tonne kilometres in 2020 to $964 billion tonne kilometres.
The build curve is increasing rapidly, along with the cost.
In part (this is caused) by the massive uplift in population growth the Government has permitted over the last few years and the coming population growth that we’re not yet, as a nation, prepared to wind back.
I heard Zali (Stegalls’) cheap political dig (about immigration), but parties of government have to make the tough decisions about balance of population growth, the skill sets that are required, and settlement.
How many people are we going to allow in? What skills are we bringing with us to help build a strong, prosperous and sustainable country? Where are they going to live? What values do they have?
That is a conversation this country has to have.
How many of you live in Sydney? Put your hand up if you live in Sydney? There you go, righto. Who lives in the country? All five of us.
If you’re genuinely interested in decreasing emissions, de-urbanizing our nation is part of that solution. So that is why having a sensible conversation about immigration is important.
We don’t have the skill sets we need to build the electrification task, let alone the roads, rail, and the Olympics build. We don’t have those skill sets on our skilled migration list. They’re not on the fast-track pathway. That’s a fact.
So, if you want to see us building the infrastructure, we need to actually make policy decisions in other portfolios required (like immigration).
Bringing in 1.5 million people over a few short years has already put a lot of pressure on our infrastructure, not just our congested cities, on our sewerage, telecommunication needs etc.
We are so off the pace with housing, construction, I don’t need to tell anyone in this room what a challenge that is.
Last year, we fell 60,000 houses short of the Government’s own target, which doesn’t take into account the hundreds of thousands of international students that are here.
What you can see from this Government’s policy is that we’re focusing only on unrealizable, aggressive 2030, 2035 and 2050 emissions reduction targets.
Chris Bowen continues to spruik slogans that we will become the world’s “renewable energy superpower”.
But at the same time, we have seen large scale hydrogen projects going under …reality is catching up with this fantasy and the laws of economics and physics are smashing into the lived experience of businesses and people.
I note we’ve been talking today about AI.
AI itself has an insatiable thirst for energy and water too, because you’ve got to stop those systems from overheating.
Is anyone in the Federal Government seriously planning for the increased power and water requirements that these data centres are requiring in the United States right now?
The United States is now looking at small modular reactors near data centres to have a low emissions source in order to harness AI and not crash their grid.
We can’t even have a conversation in this country about removing the moratorium on nuclear power generation.
The RBA, through Deputy Governor Andrew Hauser, has warned the Government risks boxing itself in on its failure to make the necessary economic decisions.
I concur because Jim, whether it’s by design because he’s a weak leader and can’t make the decisions himself, or as I suspect, has been sat on by a very cautious prime minister who every time tries to oppose, whether it was tax reform or productivity.
There’s very little room to move to get our spending under control at a national level, to pay for Labor’s ambitious social programs plus renewable infrastructure spend, or its commitment to increase defence spending.
Consequently, Dr Chalmers, who I fear is like a latter-day Rex Connor.
(Now it’s not just AFR infrastructure Summit week, it’s also the 50th anniversary of The Dismissal! So, I worry Jim’s a bit like Rex Connor, looking at ways to fund government inspired programs but this time with Australian’s hard-earned super being his targeted choice.
If you recall, Rex Connor (without permission) from Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and Cabinet, chased billions in Middle Eastern petro dollars he hope would fund national development projects.
This will be superannuation’s greatest test. I heard someone earlier today ask, ‘where’s the money coming from?’ Good question. Really good question.
Whether the trustees of our over $4 trillion superannuation funds think it is in their best interest to devote Australian worker’s hard earned savings into government mandated renewable schemes, aged care facilities, public housing, that will be the test for the superannuation trustees.
Finally, we also have to acknowledge that there is a deficit of public trust in the Australian political system, and trust in government (in general) to be able to solve for the complicated challenges our country faces.
So, whether it is the Teals in the capital cities talking about community needs, or whether it’s Pauline Hanson with her highly populist mantra, or the Greens.
All three of those cohorts in our political system are a result of the breakdown in public trust.
But not one of the three can reconcile the challenges of being in government like Minister Catherine King has to engage in every day, and like the Coalition has to (as an Opposition party of government).
This breakdown in trust has happened previously, and it’s happening around the globe. I’m reminded of the 1930s.
And as a former esteemed editor of the AFR said recently: “The ongoing squeeze on families, from power bills to rents, is the sharp edge of the problem of trying to balance these competing interests.
The solution lies not in ever-larger subsidies or higher government spending, but in restoring the spirit of reform. It will take clear thinking.”
Indeed, that’s why days like today are important. Honest debate, facing up to the reality and having the courage to resist short-term fixes in favour of structural reform.
I willingly accept, as a leader in a previous Coalition Government, the mistakes we made that led to the breakdown of trust in the body politic.
However, the Labor Party itself must know, deep down, that it will never reach the emission reduction targets it has claimed. And yet they still prosecute the case that renewable energy is cheaper whilst Australians are looking at their bills.
Well, ACCI’s report last week said 1 in 3 businesses don’t think they’ll make next Christmas. That is the reality out there on the street.
The vast majority of Australians want action on climate change, including myself.
We must care for the planet, and we also have to care for people.
We have to actually strike a new political bargain that recognizes these trade offs.
I confidently predict that the Labor Party will eventually come to a very similar position (on emissions) as the National Party, and hopefully the Liberals (will do the same) tomorrow.
We’ve got to sweat the coal assets, we’ve got to use our abundant gas reserves, together with renewable energy.
We’ve got to accept, as other G20 countries have, that nuclear is part of an energy mix of a low-emissions future.
My chief responsibility as a policy maker is to make life better for our people for an economy that serves them, not for people to serve the economy.
Today we face very grave challenges as a country.
We need to get the policy settings right to actually deliver a society that is in the public good. That’s the end goal for all of us.
I look forward to listening and hearing from you today, working with you as the Shadow Minister over the coming years to implement policy solutions that do start to mend the social contract that’s been broken, particularly between the younger generations and government.
ENDS