Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I can concur with what the former speaker, the member for Chisholm, has had to say. It is very important that people do have some privacy in their own home when it comes to phone calls. Her exposition today has been worth listening to, though she claims all the credit—and rightly so, if she has put that work in. It was probably before my time. I congratulate her and all those who have been concerned about the issue of pesky phone calls that we all get in our homes at the most inappropriate times.

I rise this evening to speak in the debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2006-2007 and cognate bills. Firstly, I congratulate the government, and particularly the Treasurer, on its economic performance which has led to a great and historic opportunity to deliver a budget and has, as the member for Cook said, delivered nine surpluses in a row. He gave a very good speech. I was impressed with the fact that not only have we had nine surpluses in a row but we were able to reduce the debt that Labor left us as we came into government.

In 1997 the Treasurer allowed me to have a meeting with him at which I told him that we had a real problem with the Pakenham bypass. I told him that the community of both South and East Gippsland could not access the city and the city could not access the country. I said that we had a bottleneck in Pakenham and that we needed to do something about it. He said, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘I’d like some planning money to put in place the groundwork to be done for a complete bypass of Pakenham—a 30 kilometre bypass—planned in the future by VicRoads.’ The Treasurer acquiesced and in 1998 we announced $30 million for the initial planning stages for the Pakenham bypass. I think it went unheralded. I do not think it was noticed—there was an election campaign on and a lot of other issues were being addressed at the time. I accepted that, but the $30 million was on the table for the state government of the day to address the issue of the Pakenham bypass.

Here we are now in 2006 and finally the sods have been turned and three contracts have been let. There has been argy-bargy over who is going to pay for what. The federal government spent $121 to coerce the Bracks government in Victoria to pay for their share of the Pakenham bypass. The Pakenham bypass will go from Beaconsfield to Nar Nar Goon. It will make a huge difference to what is happening not only in Gippsland but also in South Gippsland, because we need to do a link road that goes from Pakenham right across to Koo Wee Rup, where the South Gippsland Highway will join with the Pakenham bypass. So we are going to end up with a situation where the whole of the economy of Gippsland and South Gippsland will benefit from what the Treasurer did when he put the first $30 million into the planning of the Pakenham bypass. It will provide great opportunities for business in Gippsland and South Gippsland. More importantly, we want to commit further moneys to connect the whole of Gippsland to the city of Melbourne. Even the member for Corangamite praises the government for the Geelong bypass. However, whilst that may be important to his electorate, can I say that bridging the gap—

Debate interrupted.

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