Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I withdraw, Mr Deputy Speaker. Through you, I say to the member for Forde: that is your legacy of delivering for Queensland. There is little wonder why—through you, Mr Deputy Speaker—your leader in the Senate describes the current opposition leader as 'very, very ordinary', because he was the architect behind these savage cuts and the lack of infrastructure spend, particularly when it comes to Cross River Rail. They have a gall coming in here and talking about infrastructure in Queensland.

I want to talk about the most important infrastructure project in my electorate, the Darra to Rocklea upgrade. As we heard from the member for Grayndler, money allocated by the federal Labor government, $200 million, is sitting in the budget. Four years later, what has happened?

It took a Labor state government, the same people they want to decry, to get this project going. It took Bill Shorten and the federal Labor team to announce this project. Then, after four years and at five minutes to midnight, the hopeless, dysfunctional coalition government honoured their commitment. Well, I say it is four years too late. It is four years that my local residents have had to sit in traffic, day in, day out, without getting home to their families and without school students being able to get to and from school. They were trapped in coalition gridlock. That is the legacy of those opposite. Do not come in here and lecture anyone about infrastructure, because, when you look at the spend that is happening right now, a $40 billion capital program will deliver 31,000 jobs this year alone. We know that the state Labor government has delivered the first state infrastructure plan and backed it with $2 billion worth of state infrastructure funding. We know that, time and time again, when it comes to delivering infrastructure and when it comes to the south-west of Brisbane, the people can rely on a state Labor government and, in the future, a federal Labor government to get them home on time. (Time expired).

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