Damian Drum (Murray, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is always great to get a lecture from the Labor Party on infrastructure. Where I come from in Victoria we had to put up with a Labor premier there, who stood on the corner of one of the main streets and just threw away $100 bills until he had run out of $1.2 billion. He decided not to build a road and it cost him $1.2 billion. The Labor Party in this great Australian parliament are fully supportive of this Premier's decision to spend $1.2 billion of taxpayers' money not to build a road. Then he put that project over to Infrastructure Victoria, and they threw it straight back at him and said, 'It's one of the three most important projects that we need to build, and we have thrown that project away.' Every time you get stuck in the traffic in Melbourne, you can thank Daniel Andrews and the Labor Party people here who refuse to take up the challenge to him for that deplorable act, that deplorable effort, on infrastructure in the great state of Victoria.

When those opposite say that this budget is all smoke and mirrors on infrastructure, I do not know what planet they have come from. We are going to get the Inland Rail project started. It is going to connect Melbourne through to Brisbane, with an offshoot at Parkes to connect Sydney. It is going to be built; it is going to get started this year. I do not know where the problem is in relation to understanding that this government is getting on with the job. If you are still not convinced, you can come to my electorate and I will take you over to the City of Echuca and show you the bridge that is being built. It was a National Party in the Victorian government that put $95 million on the table. The Labor Party have been in government—and they are back in government now—and they did not want to know about this bridge. The community have been fighting for it for 50 years. There was the $95 million that went to Victoria, and when we had the opportunity with Darren Chester, as the National Party minister, we put $97 million on the table from the federal government, and then we got the National Party in New South Wales to commit their $90-odd million. It is a $280 million bridge. The drilling rigs are there now and the bore samples are being taken. The bulldozers are moving round the roundabouts. We are building the bridge that has taken 50 years of the Labor Party doing absolutely nothing. The bridge is getting built. When you get the Inland Rail—

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