Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take the opportunity to talk about Queensland's amazing state government and the work that they are doing to promote the building of much needed infrastructure in Queensland. I was very privileged to attend an Infrastructure Association of Queensland breakfast on Monday morning sponsored by the Port of Brisbane. It was wonderful to be have been hosted by the Brisbane Airport Corporation to attend a breakfast to hear a keynote speech from Deputy Premier Jackie Trad, who spoke to us about the state's infrastructure plan that had been released the previous day.

It is an infrastructure plan that is going to put investment into the infrastructure that Queensland will need. It builds on the strong work that the government has undertaken to established Building Queensland, to seek to take the politics out of infrastructure decision making in Queensland, much like Anthony Albanese's very successful Infrastructure Australia model. They also sought to introduce a very innovative approach in last year's state budget, which was the introduction of market-led proposals for infrastructure builds in Queensland. That is something that has been received very well by the Queensland infrastructure community.

One of the major topics that the Deputy Premier spoke about at that breakfast was Cross River Rail. Cross River Rail is woefully behind in Queensland because the Newman government scrapped the plans that were made for Cross River Rail. The Abbott government, now the Turnbull government, scrapped the federal funding. We need Cross River Rail and I certainly hope that attention will be paid to this very important project into the future.

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