The rhetoric — if not the substance — of ‘nation-building’ is beginning to define the boundaries of contemporary national political debate. In January 2007, then Prime Minister, John Howard, seemed to allude to something approaching a nation-building agenda when he spoke in the following terms to the National Press Club about his plan to secure Australia’s ‘water future’:
By getting the big things right — by reforming and retooling our economy — we can afford to do the bold things — like saving the Murray-Darling Basin from economic and environmental decline, like securing our nation in a time of threat and uncertainty, like positioning Australia as a twenty-first century energy superpower, like meeting the challenge of climate change in a way that supports our competitiveness and plays to Australia’s strengths. Water scarcity is a major national challenge. And there will be other challenges we must confront in the years to come. But with the resilience, adaptability and boldness Australians have shown in the past, they can be overcome.[13]
For his part, then Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd, remarked when he spoke to the Australia Industry Group in February 2007:
Building the infrastructure for a modern, dynamic economy is a major priority for Labor … Rather than leave it entirely to the States or to the private sector, I want to see the Australian government return to its true nation-building role by investing in the nation’s infrastructure.[14]
Kevin Rudd’s announcement on 21 March 2007 that, if elected, Labor would roll out a $4.7 billion national high-speed broadband network, effectively threw down the nation-building gauntlet. In his 10 May Budget Reply Speech, Rudd made the following comparison:
In the nineteenth century, governments laid out railway networks as the arteries of the economy. In the twenty-first century, governments around the world are ensuring that high speed broadband networks are laid out — as the arteries of the new economy … This is the nation-building that the nation needs.[15]
Of course, these announcements are consistent with long-standing ALP policy to pursue nation-building. Indeed, Chapter 6 of the Australian Labor Party’s National Platform and Constitution 2007 is dedicated to the question of nation-building.[16] Since taking office, the Rudd Labor Government has established a Ministry of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development together with a new statutory advisory council, Infrastructure Australia, to:
… provide advice to Australian governments about infrastructure gaps and bottlenecks that hinder economic growth and prosperity. It will also identify investment priorities and policy and regulatory reforms that will be necessary to enable timely and coordinated delivery of national infrastructure investment.[17]
Infrastructure Australia is portrayed as a ‘key driver in the Rudd Government's plan to fight inflation’. This it will do, according to the government, ‘by boosting the economy's productive capacity [and] unlocking infrastructure bottlenecks like clogged ports and congested roads’. The government has also pledged to ‘develop a strategic blueprint for Australia's infrastructure needs and ensure future projects are determined by economic, social, and environmental needs — not short-term political interests’.[18]