Matt Williams (Hindmarsh, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Whether it is WestConnex, as my good colleague the member for Banks says, or the Torrens to Torrens project in South Australia, the Prime Minister, Minister Briggs and others have decided that Australia needs greater productivity and greater infrastructure, and we are going to deliver. I have been lobbying hard, since I was elected, to get that result for the Torrens to Torrens project in South Australia. Minister Briggs knows that I have been speaking to him on a regular basis. I have also been speaking to the Prime Minister and other senior ministers. They have come through with $1 billion for the South Road upgrade, which will deliver better travelling times so people have more time to spend with their families rather than on the roads.

The budget will also deliver a groundbreaking medical health research institute. As Australians, we look to where we can be competitive in a new economy. Given that our manufacturing sector is declining, we need some new industries, some new areas of competitive advantage. We have excelled in medical research over the years, with companies like CSL and Cochlear, and the list goes on. We have had great researchers like Howard Florey, who helped develop penicillin and saved millions of lives in the process. We have been very good at this, and we need to do more. The billions of dollars going into that will inspire more scientists and more great outcomes to help fight the diseases of an ageing population.

It was good to note the comments of Peter Beattie, the former Labor Premier of Queensland, in The Australian a week and a half ago. He described the medical research fund as nation building. It is truly nation building. We need to focus on these areas that we can excel in and inspire a future generation of Australian researchers and medical scientists. Hopefully we can commercialise some of that research as well, so we have spin-off companies, just as, in my city of Adelaide, we have had GroPep and BresaGen in the past and we have Bionomics, which is doing some great things in the world of medicine.

In higher education, we are offering 80,000 more places in TAFE courses, VET courses. We will help students with their loans going forward and we will provide scholarships for the disadvantaged, people from poorer backgrounds. There are some great measures in this budget. I am very proud of what we are doing to get our finances back on track so that we can live within our means, so that we can fund crucial social services, physical services and the physical infrastructure of the future and so that we can say to our children, 'We have given you a better life and helped Australia be a better country.'

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