Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

The project that used to be called the F3 to M2 link and which now has been renamed the M1 to M2 link, or NorthConnex, is an incredibly important project for my community and for those to the north of me.

I have watched the development of this project over many years: I watched the member for Berowra talk about this project many years ago; I watched the Labor government work on it; I heard the announcement quite some time ago; I saw the initial $5 million flow through the 2012-13 budget; I saw the $150 million in the 2013-14 budget under Labor, which is now flowing; and I saw the press release on 21 June last year, when the federal infrastructure and transport minister, Anthony Albanese, and the New South Wales roads and ports minister, Duncan Gay, signed an intergovernmental agreement on behalf of their respective governments, locking in potential funding contributions required to bring forward the delivery of that all-important missing link. So I have been watching this project grow over many years, and complex projects like this do take many years. Being an infrastructure government requires sometimes years of work before projects come to the first sod, let alone the first vehicle driving down them.

So I was a little surprised when I saw the current government announce this project as their own—'We commit to this. We will do this,' they said. That is wonderful, that unlike so many other transport projects they are not actually removing the budget—they are not cutting the budget for this one. That is a great thing. But taking credit—full credit—for work that was done by someone else over many years, in the real world is a wee bit of something that you would not think was a particularly nice thing to do. If one of your kids did it you might actually be unhappy and think that there was something a bit troubling. If one of your kids did it on an ongoing basis—took credit for something that someone else did, maybe their brother or sister, or blamed their brother or sister for something they did—you might think there was something a little problematic and start working on their character. And yet this is what we see a government doing—a government elected by the people of Australia is prepared to walk into this House, walk out into the public eye and blatantly—with a smirk on their faces because they know it is blatant—take credit for work which is clearly not theirs.

I give credit to this government for continuing with this project—I do, because I have seen so many other infrastructure projects get the chop. We have seen the Abbott government ripping all the federal funding for all urban passenger rail projects, which were also well underway, well down the pathway towards building.

An opposition member: $3 billion.

Yes, exactly—$3 billion for your electorate. So it is good that this project is going ahead. It is just a shame that the government does not have a bit more character in its announcement of it. Then again, I also saw a few weeks ago the Minister for Social Services announce that the Abbott government had delivered an increase to the pensions, when actually what happened was an automatic adjustment based around male average weekly earnings which happens twice a year—because we introduced the legislation, the increase automatically comes. Press release: 'Government delivers on pension increase'! Extraordinary exaggeration.

This is an important project and we now have both sides of politics over years that extend prior to the Labor government—through the last years of the Liberal government, through the Labor years and now through the Liberal years again—that will actually deliver this project. But can I say to the members opposite that it really is time. You won government. Have a bit of grace. As victors, have a bit of grace and actually give credit where credit is due. A number of governments—Labor at state level, Liberal at state level, Liberal or Labor and Liberal again at federal level again—have contributed to this project. Really, a little bit of honesty would not go astray.

Debate adjourned.

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