Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on this budget, which begins the important task of repairing the Commonwealth budget and delivering a credible pathway back to surplus. Consider where we were in 2007: we had an unemployment rate of four per cent, no government debt, we had budgets in surplus. When the Labor government left office six years later, they left us with 200,000 more unemployed, gross debt projected to rise to $667 billion, $123 billion in cumulative deficits and the world's biggest carbon tax. This budget is an important step in fixing up that mess.

What we see with repairing the budget is that we have a pathway back to surplus in 2018-19 and budget surpluses to build to well over one per cent of GDP by 2024-25. Rather than the debt of $667 billion, which was projected in 2013-14, in 10 years' time the debt will be $389 billion—almost $300 billion less. This decline in debt is equivalent to $10,100 per Australian. By repairing the budget, Australia will have lower debt and lower interest costs. The interest on government debt is projected to be $16 billion lower in a decade, meaning more money for health, education, roads and support for families and seniors.

There are two parts of the budget that I would really like to focus on .The first is the infrastructure. The budget will create an $11.6 billion Infrastructure Growth Package. This is important to unlock growth, unlock productivity in our economy and to boost the total infrastructure investment by Commonwealth, state and local governments, as well as the private sector, to over $125 billion by the end of this decade—or the equivalent of eight Snowy Mountains schemes.

In my electorate of Boothby, finally we are going to see work commence on South Road. The RAA, the key motoring organisation in South Australia, has long had a vision of a north-south road corridor, going from Darlington in the south to Wingfield in the north and connecting with the Southern Expressway in the south and the Northern Expressway in the north. So we are finally seeing action on South Road at Darlington. This announcement has been welcomed by my constituents who have expressed their appreciation now that this project is finally going ahead. It is great news for local traffic, and it will create jobs, which will help the South Australian economy in the future. As a focal point of the federal budget there was an extra $441 million in funding allocated to South Australia for upgrades to South Road, taking the total federal contribution to almost $1 billion and allowing both the Darlington and Torrens to Torrens upgrades to be constructed simultaneously. I want to pay credit to the Prime Minister and also to the Leader of the Opposition in South Australia, Steven Marshall, who realised, rather than a stand-off between one project and the other, indeed, why not do both.

The upgrades at Darlington are what I have been fighting for on behalf my constituents since 2007. These upgrades have been promised since 2006 by the Labor Party who have failed to deliver. In the last seven years Labor have spruiked for South Road at Sturt Road a tunnel, an underpass, a flyover, an interchange and a widening of South Road. None of these projects have been delivered. In this year's budget we are delivering on our election commitment to build the Darlington interchange by funding 80 per cent of the overall project through our Infrastructure Growth Package. The upgrades will mean free-flowing traffic from the end of the Southern Expressway to Daws Road. In addition, the project contains much needed improvement to the Marion Road and Sturt Road intersection. These infrastructure projects will create much needed opportunities for South Australian contractors and will bring our infrastructure into the 21st century. Adelaide, I think, has had the poorest infrastructure of any mainland capital city, but completion of the north-south road corridor should see that rectified.

The major South Road upgrades at Darlington are scheduled to be finished by 2018. It is planned to construct a lowered road to the west of South Road that will extend the Southern Expressway free-flowing carriageways to a point north of the South Road-Ayliffes Road intersection. Flinders Drive will be extended to connect through to Sturt Road allowing local traffic to Flinders University and the Flinders Medical Centre to be unimpeded. There will be upgrades to the remaining South Road intersections, that is, connection to the Southern Expressway, Flinders Drive, Sturt Road, Ayliffes Road and the entrance to the Tonsley Park. As I said before, the intersection of Marion Road and Sturt Road will be widened, and there is also going to be some work done on South Road through Edwardstown near Castle Plaza to cater for the morning peak-hour traffic. They are looking at an extra northbound lane on South Road. So there will be some widening there. Early works should begin later this year, with heavy roadworks to commence next year. The entire project is to be completed by 2018.

I was very pleased to be with the Prime Minister, the Assistant Minister for Infrastructure, the member for Mayo, and the Premier of South Australia and the transport minister for South Australia, Stephen Mullighan, touring the Traffic Management Centre in Norwood and having a look at what the project at Darlington will look like. It really is one of the key measures for my electorate and a complete delivery of what we committed to at the election. In addition, there is money for Roads to Recovery funding. South Australian councils will receive twice as much funding. I also encourage local councils to apply for funding under the expanded Black Spot program.

The other key measure in the budget that I wanted to talk about was the Medical Research Future Fund. This is a landmark initiative. It really is a nation-building initiative for the 21st century. Before the election we said one of the key things we would do would be to back our strengths. Medical research is one of the strengths, and it is going to be one of the future drivers for the economy. So to have a capital fund building up to $20 billion will allow an income stream in perpetuity for medical research. It is a significant expansion of medical research funding in this country.

In my home state of South Australia the SAHMRI—the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute—is well positioned to capitalise on this. It has been the named 'the cheese grater' or 'the pineapple' and it came about as a result of the Review of health and medical research in South Australia which was conducted by Professor John Shine AO and Mr Alan Young AM, who recommended the establishment of a dedicated flagship research institute for South Australia. South Australia being a small state, we had three different universities all competing against each other; but what we really needed was one flagship research institute. With the new Royal Adelaide Hospital and the University of Adelaide medical school moving to the same precinct, this co-location will build on South Australia's impressive contribution to medical research and innovation.

In his opening speech last November the Prime Minister specifically mentioned the work of two Nobel prizewinners for medicine, Dr Robin Warren and Lord Howard Florey, who are both graduates of the University of Adelaide medical school. He said that Lord Florey was possibly the greatest Australian ever for his contribution in developing penicillin for wider use. He also paid tribute to the work of the previous government and spoke of the importance of medical research.

With the new SAHMRI, South Australia has the potential to develop a biotech precinct in the North Terrace area, in the same way that Parkville in Melbourne is a long established biotech precinct and Brisbane has become one. This is an opportunity to build on our existing strengths—our renowned excellence in research and clinical trials but we need to foster a climate where that can occur. That is why the Medical Research Future Fund is so important. It will see people come to Australia from overseas as a destination of choice to do their postdoctoral research and build their careers in medical research.

The executive director Steve Wesselingh has already assembled an impressive group of individuals. We have seen people return from overseas, like Professor Prash Sanders, working in the area of heart health, and Dr Charles Mullighan, heading up the research theme in cancer. These are people who could have had a research career anywhere in the world but have chosen to return to Adelaide because of the facilities that are on offer. SAHMRI has established seven research themes: Aboriginal health; cancer; healthy mothers; babies and children; heart health; infection and immunity; mind and brain; and nutrition and metabolism. It will be a significant development in the landscape in South Australia but it is important that we have the Medical Research Future Fund to provide certainty for medical research into the future.

SAHMRI is building a team of more than 600 outstanding researchers who are working together in the search for better treatments and cures. It is creating a world-class precinct of medical research and clinical application adjacent to the site of the new Royal Adelaide Hospital. These are just two of the important developments for my electorate in the budget and we need to have the Medical Research Future Fund adequately funded.

It is a landmark initiative. I pay credit to the Minister For Health who has long wanted to make medical research a signature of his time as minister. It really builds on the theme that it has been Liberal governments that have been the great friends of medical research in this country. We well remember all the times the previous Treasurer tried to strip hundreds of millions of dollars from the medical research budget.

The Medical Research Future Fund will build to a level of $20 billion; it will then be the largest medical research fund in the world. It will provide income of over $1 billion and it is important, seeing what Labor did with some of these other future funds, that we have a structure like the Future Fund so the Labor Party cannot raid the capital and spend it.

They are the two initiatives I wanted to speak on. The South Road development will now be underway. I do pay credit to the South Australian government, because they have actually come up with an improved proposal for Darlington. It is improved from what was originally in the Darlington Transport Study, and it will be great news for residents of the south. South Road-Sturt Road has been one of the major bottlenecks and major hold-ups in traffic, so this will be a welcome development by the time it is finished in 2018. Similarly, the Medical Research Future Fund is going to be very important, right across Australia. SAHMRI is a new institution but is well poised to benefit from that fund.

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