Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In rising to support the motion of the member for Aston, I do so in an amended way. The first point to make is to take up what the member for Aston said in closing about cajoling the Gillard Labor government to invest in the east-west project on infrastructure. It is astounding to have a member of the coalition to be talking about infrastructure in this place, particularly given the appalling record of the Howard government during its 11½ years in office. The fact of the matter is that $13.5 billion is being invested by this federal Labor government in Victoria's transport infrastructure alone. That more than doubles the annual infrastructure spend as against what was occurring under the Howard government. Under the Howard government about $89 a year per Victorian was being spent on transport infrastructure. Today $201 per Victorian is being spent on the state's transport infrastructure. So to stand there and suggest that this is a government not committed to the infrastructure and the infrastructure of the state is plainly wrong. In that respect, there are a number of infrastructure projects that the government has committed to in Victoria in relation to transport which I will go through.

I do want to say that, to the extent that we agree with this motion, we absolutely agree with the premise that traffic congestion in and around Melbourne is a very significant issue and is one which needs to be addressed as soon as possible. To the extent that this motion highlights the need to address the issue of traffic congestion around Melbourne, it is an important motion before this House, but it fails to address the critical process that we need to go through and the decisions that then need to be taken to address that traffic congestion. All the goodwill in the world can lead to a vey bad result if we do not get the decisions around the traffic congestion right. It is in this respect that the East West Link has flawed thinking associated with it.

The East West Link in its totality as a project where we are able to wave a magic wand and have it appear tomorrow is a great thing. There is no question about that. But the problem is that too often we hear from the opposition a kind of Harry Potter version of going about public policy where they imagine that there would be a magic wand that you could just wave and make things happen. We had Tony Abbott come down to Geelong about a month ago. His solution in relation to the issues of Ford was to just convince Ford to go and export their Territory models as though Harry Potter style you could wave a magic wand and get Detroit to do whatever you want.

Actually, it does not work that way. I am not sure that Tony Abbott has ever done any advocacy on behalf of trying to change the production line in Corio to produce a left-hand drive vehicle but that is what we would like to see. In any event, what we have seen from the opposition and what we see from the state government is this waving of the magic wand. The reality of what the state government is doing has two very significant consequences and they are very adverse to the people of the Greater West of Melbourne and that very much includes Geelong in terms of our access to the Melbourne CBD.

The first issue is this: it completely ignores the role of rail. Rail is a really important part of building our transport infrastructure, in terms of building a first-rate metropolitan transport system within Melbourne. That is why we have committed to Melbourne Metro because you do not have a modern train system within Melbourne without having Melbourne Metro. The state government proposal of funding a rail link to Avalon would be wonderful were we to ever see it, but nothing like that happens without the Melbourne Metro project going ahead. In the prioritising of the East West Link, there is a total ignoring of the situation in relation to rail. We have committed to Melbourne Metro in this budget and, through the regional rail link which is a $3.2 billion project, we have also committed to increasing the rail links of Victoria's major regional centres including Geelong to the Melbourne CBD by having a dedicated rail line which will see people from Geelong—and for that matter Ballarat and Bendigo—get access to Southern Cross Station without having to go through the train traffic congestion which is on the metro rail line at present. That is why the regional rail link is very important.

The second issue, which is why the East West Link proposal is flawed, is that we need to see a proper process undertaken whereby Infrastructure Australia gets to examine the priority in which it is built. In other words, do you start with east or do you start with west? Again, in terms of the Harry Potter-style public policy that we see from the Liberals, we have had this vague sense from the Victorian government towards Infrastructure Australia that 'We would really like you to build the East West Link but we would like you to give us some money to do that,' without them ever going through a detailed assessment as to where the need is.

Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, you know this as well anybody that, when you get on the road today and commute from Geelong to Melbourne, that commute is now 10 or 15 minutes longer than it was five years ago. The congestion that you hit at the Western Ring Road interchange is enormous. As somebody who has done this commute for the better part of 10 years, prior to entering this place, I know that doing that trip now at peak hour is about 15 minutes longer than it was just five years ago. That oughtn't to be a surprise. It oughtn't to be rocket science to reach that conclusion. Why? Because the south-west of Melbourne is the fastest growing area in the country.

We know that in 2012, Wyndham council, which is based in Werribee, grew at a rate of 7.6 per cent—second only to the Serpentine Jarrahdale council in Perth. In 2011, Wyndham was in fact the fastest growing local government area in the country. Through all of that growth, including growth in Geelong, in your electorate, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, the Armstrong Creek project will in the fullness of time essentially attach a city the size of Ballarat onto the southern edge of Geelong. All of this is creating enormous traffic congestion on the commute from Geelong to Melbourne and, for that matter, on the commute from any of the western suburbs—such as the member for Gellibrand's area, Werribee, into the CBD.

Essentially, funding the East West project from east to west means that the traffic jam that you encounter today when you get to the Western Ring Road interchange, going from Geelong to Melbourne, will be what you will encounter for the next 10 to 20 years, because that is how long it is going to take by the time all the work is done in the east, which you have just described—

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