Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

It is a big call as to who is the worst, but I have never heard a weaker response to a budget—and I have done a few of them now—than I have heard in this MPI.

It is hard for me to address the areas where allegedly we failed to invest in infrastructure because I have not heard them, but I will remind the House what we did in relation to infrastructure: $2.3 billion, a 20 per cent increase, for our national infrastructure plan. I think it was said by the member for Lilley that there was no national infrastructure plan. We have AusLink—a five-year program. It was $12 billion; we increased it by 20 per cent last night. It is the biggest investment in road and rail transport in Australian history. It has never been done before. Last night we added to it the Hume Highway, the Bruce Highway, the Tully works, the Great Northern Highway, the Sturt Highway, the East Tamar Highway and the Victoria Highway.

We outlined all of the projects, including a national infrastructure plan of a dimension never seen before. The Murray-Darling Basin received the biggest injection of funds. The Darling is our biggest river catchment area. The Darling comes out of Queensland and joins the Murray, which divides New South Wales and Victoria. It flows to South Australia and provides the drinking water for Adelaide. We outlined an investment in dams and irrigation, an investment which has never been made before. That was the investment of last night.

Let us go to medical research—an area where Australia leads, as you heard during question time. We invented the bionic ear, penicillin and treatment for stomach ulcers and melanomas. Do I hear someone say one of those machines—

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