Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Water Resources and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

This government is looking at focusing more and more money on the cities. I know that the member for Maribyrnong is a bit off colour today—he is worried about who is going to play him in the upcoming movie—but we need to get back to what is vitally important and what is at the nub of this issue, and it is strategic road funding.

The minister just said that the previous government was not committed to infrastructure. That is blatantly untrue. I could name several of the strategic Roads to Recovery funded projects that have been greatly beneficial to people where there were not a large number of votes at all. An example is the Coonamble to Bingara Road funding. Not a lot of people live on that road. It was built to grow that part of the state. The people of Pilliga can now get their children to school because they have a bitumen road due to this funding. The people of Bingara now have access to more tourism dollars because of the road—

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