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

You can support him all you like; I am just saying to you that I think you all have to question yourselves if you think that it is good economics to spend $1.2 billion to do nothing on a project that has now been put forward.

The Inland Rail will not only connect these great cities with each other by a freight lane but also take all of these trucks off the main roads of Australia. The area around the Goulburn Valley, which I represent, is one of the biggest food producing regions in Australia and, with that, comes an incredibly large fleet of trucks. The biggest number of truck registrations outside of Melbourne and Sydney exists in the city of Shepparton. We will now see many of those trucks being able to do their work locally and regionally and they will not have to go interstate in the way that they used to. Apart from the road safety component, this will drive down the cost of getting your product from the farms to the market and from the processors to the market.

In relation to infrastructure around the seat of Murray, this budget provides for $100 million to be committed to the North East line. Under the Labor Party in Victoria, the North East line, along with the Shepparton line and the Gippsland rail line, have been left to deteriorate where we have a situation where the services are inconsistent. The services are always late. They are slower than they were 40 years ago. The $100 million is going to be spent to fix the North East line. There will also be $10 million to be used to ensure that we do a comprehensive plan for transport right throughout the Goulburn Valley. It will take on board freight needs, passenger rail, road transport and what we need to do to have a decent airport—similar to the way that Wagners have got their airport up and running in southern Queensland.

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