Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The funding to widen the F5 was not $52 million; it came under AusLink 2. It is a $140 million project of which the Labor Party, leading up to the last election, agreed with the New South Wales government that the federal Labor government would contribute $112 million to that project. I announced that with the then minister, Martin Ferguson. It followed a series of questions that I asked in this place of the then transport minister, the member for Robertson. He was not prepared to give the commitment to widen that piece of infrastructure or to guarantee that the money would be made available for it. It was not until the Labor Party went out there—Martin Ferguson and I—that the member for Macarthur, Pat Farmer, decided to go out and try to gazump us two or three days later.

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