Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, can I acknowledge the member for Macquarie particularly on her work in recent weeks with her community in relation to the bushfires which have caused so much damage. Congratulations. No wonder you have been sent back here for the fourth time, member for Macquarie.

Of course you are right, the WestConnex investment will be a game-changing investment in Western Sydney, and to ensure that the Prime Minister is the infrastructure Prime Minister, this is a key measure to ensure our productivity performance increases. This is a project which is long overdue. It does make you wonder why for 20 years the Labor Party in New South Wales did not go ahead. What else they were up to in their time in government?

This project will deal with a range of issues. It will deal with reducing travel times between Parramatta Road and Sydney airport by 40 minutes, which I thought the members of Western Sydney would appreciate. It will halve bus travel times between inner west and the city; it will bypass 52 sets of traffic lights; and it will remove 3,000 trucks a day from Parramatta road by putting them underground. It will lead to neighbourhood revitalisation and it will create some 10,000 jobs during construction, delivering more than $20 billion in economic benefits to New South Wales and to our country. It is of course our premier city and should have premier infrastructure, and it does not at this time. But with the infrastructure Prime Minister in charge, it will have again.

We will ensure that not just in Sydney but also across Australia we will get our country moving. We will not be spending our money, our productive capacity, on pink batt programs and overpriced school halls. We will be focusing on economically productive infrastructure like the East West Link project in Melbourne, the Gateway North in Brisbane, the north-south in Adelaide and like the Perth Gateway and Swan Valley Bypass. We will be delivering projects across our country to lift our productive capacity.

The truth is that we are facing a more difficult fiscal environment because the Labor Party has left a mountain of debt. We have asked the Productivity Commission to look at ways in which we can reduce the cost and the time of these projects and ensure that we get more for less and in quicker time. The Australian people are sick of governments talking about infrastructure; they actually want to see some infrastructure on the ground, particularly the WestConnex projects in Sydney. I congratulate Premier O'Farrell for getting on with the job and we know that with the infrastructure Prime Minister in charge Australia is once again open for business.

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