Lance Hockridge Optimism around the new national government must be backed by a strong reform agenda if Australia is to solve its productivity and infrastructure challenges, says Aurizon Chief Executive and Managing Director, Lance Hockridge. With a new government in place, I certainly do detect a small spring in the step of the business community. I’m known as being more bullish than a number of my colleagues, particularly in our space, and especially in the resource space. But it seems that, on the back of all of that, many predictions of the end of the world as we know it are already being proven to be somewhat bearish. My challenge, therefore, to business and to government, is not to withdraw from this opportunity that we have in front of us, but to create a new start and create the kind of momentum that is needed for change in the infrastructure space. We’ve all got a role to play on what is a relatively long road around reform and restructure. The Abbott Government is certainly clearly starting to blast away at the policy void – and that’s a good thing. The renewal of federalism is a genuine prospect in which states get on with business, without the dead hand of Canberra impacting on everything that they do and need to do. 68
futurebuilding
Volume 4 Number 1
The streamlining of environmental approvals, as witnessed between the Queensland and Commonwealth Governments’ Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), makes great sense. Similar moves, of course, have been made in New South Wales. We don’t want to lower the bar around environmental standards, but I believe that we certainly can be faster, we can eliminate duplication, and we can cut the costs of business in this area. The Coalition Government, I believe, also ought to be well supported for its policy of accelerating the completion of free trade agreements with key countries in our region. This will be particularly important for the agricultural sector – and it will help Australia realise the genuine prospect of our agricultural sector becoming the ‘food bowl’ of Asia. The flow-on benefits, as we all know, to regional and rural Australia – indeed to the overall Australian economy – would be substantial. In economic terms, notwithstanding my optimism, I don’t believe that the prevailing headwinds that we’ve all been experiencing are going to dissipate
