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

I thank the member for Lyne for his question and for his ongoing commitment to upgrading the Pacific Highway. Indeed, in the federal budget this year we did announce an additional $3.56 billion funding for the nation-building program and we indicated that it would be available for the Pacific Highway on a dollar-for-dollar matching basis. We also indicated that it was possible to achieve the joint objective, first put down by the Howard government, of a full duplication of the highway by 2016. So I was very disappointed by the fact that the New South Wales government has failed to step up to this opportunity in spite of the fact that year after year they made promises that they would deliver matching funds for the Pacific Highway and that they were committed to the full duplication by 2016. They failed to deliver.

Premier O'Farrell, Deputy Premier Stoner and Minister for Roads and Ports, Duncan Gay, are all on the record time after time saying they would make it a top priority. They now say that the reason was a $5 billion cut in funding for New South Wales in terms of revenue expectations. But the fact is this government found space to provide increased funding in the nation-building program even though there has been a $140 billion drop in revenue as a result of the global financial crisis. The NRMA came out for New South Wales to match the funding. But it gets even worse. Last year, the state government Treasurer, Mike Baird, said in his budget speech:

In its last Budget, the Commonwealth allocated $750 million …

… we are determined to provide the funds needed to match the Commonwealth offer.

In their budget papers of last week that figure has become $468 million—that is, they have cut funding for the Pacific Highway by $300 million on what they promised just six months ago.

What does the National Party do about this? The Leader of the National Party goes out there and says that 2016 cannot be achieved and he would be very disappointed if duplication was not completed by 2020. He would not commit one cent of additional funding for the Pacific Highway in spite of the fact that we have already committed $4.1 billion dollars. They committed $1.3 billion over 12 long years.

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