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

Let me say that, as infrastructure minister, I am proud to be a part of government that are delivering the biggest infrastructure program in our nation's history. We have provided $50 billion for infrastructure projects across the country. Frankly, I have been staggered by statements by the shadow minister that, somehow or other, this $50 billion is less than the expenditure in previous years. Never forget that Labor's expenditure on road and rail infrastructure in its last year in office was less than what the Howard government spent in its last year. So Labor's own record is not particularly good, and then to make claims that, somehow, that there are cuts in the budget is an absolute nonsense.

If you go to budget paper No. 1 and table 15 it is absolutely clear that expenditure is increasing. The budget papers show that expenditure on road will go from $4.214 billion to $8.401 billion over the next three budgets. That is doubling, essentially, over a period of around four years. If you look at rail, the story is the same. It increases from $740 million in 2014-15 up to $1.3 billion in 2016-17. To talk about cuts is absolute nonsense. We hear these statements that somehow there are no new projects in this budget. The reality is that in the last budget we announced a five-year program that included many new projects. So, we are honouring and delivering the second stage of the last budget with the projects that were announced. That includes exciting things like the Toowoomba Range development that Labor has opposed, both at state and federal level, over the years, but now it is actually going to happen. All the money that is required to complete the Pacific Highway four-laning is in this year's budget. That would never have happened under the other side's policy. It would be a decade away.

I have also listened with amazement to the claim that somehow or other only eight per cent of the funding will be going to Victoria. The reality is that the budget forecasts 19 per cent of the funding going to Victoria, not eight per cent. The figure will fall because of the Victorian government's decision not to build the East West Link. That means it falls to about 12 per cent of the total. But that is a self-inflicted pain for Victoria. That is what Labor did to the program. Labor took away the biggest project in Victoria and there is nothing in the short-term to replace it. We will negotiate with Victoria—

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