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

This morning I was with the member for Canberra, the member for Fraser and the member for Eden-Monaro at the beginning of construction of the Majura Parkway, which is the largest ever road project in the ACT. Recommended by Infrastructure Australia it will deliver benefits for the ACT economy of a billion dollars. It is part of the rollout of the Nation Building Program.

Just in the last couple of weeks we have been getting on with the business of governing and opening the southern Sydney freight line to traffic. For 100 years it has been blocked and we have had to stop—indeed there has been a curfew—at Sydney regarding freight line to the port, fixed as a result of our investment. We have confirmed that the widening of the Great Eastern Highway in Perth will open six months ahead of schedule. We have awarded the contract to build the Gosford passing loops as part of the northern Sydney freight corridor upgrade. Last Friday I was with the member for Perth at the WA Gateway project. It is a billion dollar project and the biggest road project ever in WA. We have put funding towards the planning in the Prime Minister's electorate of the western interstate freight terminal that has the potential to take 700,000 trucks off the streets of Melbourne.

We have opened the new heavy vehicle regulator office in Brisbane. We have opened the new rail safety regulator office in Adelaide. As a result of those programs, the national transport regulators will deliver $30 billion benefit to the national economy over 20 years. We have gone to the electorate of the member for Gellibrand to look at the regional rail link—the bridge over the Maribyrnong River and the work that is taking place there—which is the largest ever investment by any federal government in any public transport project in Australia's history. We have been getting on with the job of identifying the big infrastructure projects that are required to build productivity, support jobs, deal with issues such as urban congestion and we are making sure that they are properly funded with proper time lines so that they can keep our economy strong into the future.

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