Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Wills for his question. This year’s budget provides an additional $8.5 billion for nation-building transport infrastructure, bringing our total investment in nation-building infrastructure to $35 billion. This includes the most significant ever investment by the federal government in rail for our major cities—nine out of 15 new projects announced last night. There is support for rail in Perth, in Adelaide, in Melbourne, in Brisbane, on the Gold Coast and in Sydney—right across the nation. There is an engagement in urban rail that will provide cleaner, greener, faster public transport services to those who live in our major cities. It is good policy in dealing with urban congestion but also good policy as part of the fight to tackle dangerous climate change.

But we have also delivered for regional Australia. Of the $35 billion, some $21.2 billion, or 60 per cent, will directly benefit those living in regional communities through projects such as the Hunter Expressway in New South Wales. We will be fixing the Cooroy to Curra, section B—ignored by those opposite, even when the transport minister was the local member. There have been 13 fatalities on this section of the road since July 2002. It took a Labor government to fix it, and fix it we will. We will be dealing with ports, dealing with nation-building infrastructure, supporting jobs today but building the infrastructure that the country needs tomorrow. The centrepiece, the largest single infrastructure project, is of course our $43 billion commitment to fibre-to-the-premises broadband. We believe that this is absolutely critical. It is through information technology being available that we are communicating the message of last night’s budget to our constituents and to the population in general.

I would encourage people to log on to the website, www.economicstimulusplan.gov.au, to see the direct impact that our plan is having right around the nation. But they do not have to just log on to our website, because many members of this House are using information technology to send a message about jobs. There is one member opposite who is sending a big message about a particular job through the internet. People can log on to the new website that has just gone live in conjunction with the budget, www.petercostello.com.au. It went live today, in conjunction with the budget. We have heard about the confusion of the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Treasurer when it comes to budget initiatives. Well, it is not just our side that agrees it is inadequate. Pete clearly thinks they are not—

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