Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

This moron raises the F3 to M2! Thank you—come in spinner! There was $405 million in the 2013 budget. The MOU was signed between myself and Minister Gay in June 2013. They changed the name to NorthConnex. It is not a new project; it is just a new name, son! It is the same project, begun and signed under us.

When we took office we were 20th in the OECD for investment in infrastructure. When we left office we were first. We doubled the roads budget, we increased the rail budget by more than 10 times and we committed more to urban public transport than all governments combined from Federation right through to 2007. What have those opposite done? In spite of the fact that Infrastructure Australia under them actually produced something at last—they produced something spooky about urban congestion and the cost to the national economy of not dealing with urban congestion—what did we see from the government? A complete refusal to invest in any urban public transport and a complete refusal to engage in our cities.

We actually embarrassed them into producing the State of Australian cities report for 2014. It had been produced in 2011, 2012 and 2013. It had been downloaded—the minister at the table knows what is coming!—three million times. So they put out a tender on AusTender. We found that on the website. It said it was going to be published just in time for Christmas—for the stockings!—on 15 December. It was printed—I have seen the cover of it. And yet what happened in Senate estimates?

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