Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

The committee demonstrates our commitment as a government to make sure that infrastructure investment in Australia delivers projects that are worthwhile, right across the nation. Once more, they will be projects that are fully costed, fully budgeted and fully funded. We know that you have got to have real money if you want to build real projects. That contrasts a bit with the member for Grayndler, who said in the parliament last week:

Infrastructure development also requires imagination and creativity. If you can imagine the future, you can assemble the building blocks to deliver your vision. That is the Labor way.

The problem for Labor was that they tried to use imaginary money to build their projects! The money was not really there. It was coming from a mining tax that did not really raise any money and from a carbon tax that did not raise any money. It was imaginary money! I am sorry, but you cannot build projects, no matter how visionary they might be, if you are using imaginary money—it has got to be the real thing. This government has a plan in place to build real projects with real money.

In the same speech the member for Grayndler said another thing with which I agree:

Now that the coalition is back in government it has inherited a Labor legacy…

That is right. A Labor legacy of debt: $123 billion in deficit over the next four years. We have a program to build real projects in Western Australia: $686 million for the Gateway WA project in Perth, a project that Labor intended to build using the proceeds of the mining tax; $615 million for the Swan Valley—

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