Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Zero. Let's go over that again: zero. I note that the member for Bradfield, the parliamentary secretary, is here to confirm that since the federal government co-funded the M7—the best piece of infrastructure in Western Sydney—there has not been any federal government funding for Western Sydney or for Sydney more generally. But now in this budget we see NorthConnex, we see WestConnex and we see a commitment to key road upgrades in Western Sydney, including Bringelly Road, with construction starting. This is not the old Labor trick that we saw during 16 years of state Labor governments of putting up the signs and parking a few bulldozers strategically at major intersections before elections—and we saw this many times. We have the funding allocated in the budget; we have a commitment from the federal government to innovative funding models that include the private sector, ensuring that we are looking at how these infrastructure projects will be funded; but we also have a commitment to start construction within 12 months. That is written into the contracts of these critical infrastructure projects. Construction will have begun by next year on critical road projects in Western Sydney, ensuring that 10,000 jobs will be supported, with construction commencing for stage 1 early next year and stage 2 also expected to begin in 2015—two years ahead of schedule—and a completion date of 2019. This WestConnex road will of course be the biggest infrastructure upgrade Sydney roads in some time.

These infrastructure improvements are well received. Infrastructure provision has been the single biggest weakness of our major city for a long time. We now have a state government committed to better infrastructure provision, we now have a Commonwealth government that—whilst we have to take tough budgetary decisions—is making key decisions in infrastructure to keep the economy ticking over and to enable our major city and major economy to grow and continue to build and create jobs into the future. It is a far-sighted vision. I commend the Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development and the assistant minister, and, on behalf of the people of Mitchell, I welcome the key commitments to billions of dollars of road funding for Sydney in this budget.

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