Cathy McGowan (Indi, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Colleagues, when I was speaking to my electorate over summer asking them what issues I should address when we came back to parliament there were two priorities: the north-east train line and mobile phone blackspots. Regarding trains, between Boxing Day and 3 January, 23 train services in my electorate were replaced with buses. Imagine the inconvenience. I tell my community that we are making progress. The government has announced $100 million, and we're looking at the scope of works. We have people around the table—the ARTC and the Victorian and Commonwealth governments—working together. I'd like to do a special call-out to Darren Chester for his work when he was minister. Now, I call on the Victorian government, because the Premier said that as soon as we got organised he would put the order in for new rolling stock. To the Premier of Victoria: now it's your turn.

On mobile phone blackspots, we all know that when we get the community, local government, emergency services, the state government and the Commonwealth working together we do really well. We had that in rounds 1 and 2 of the mobile phone blackspots program, but now it's fallen apart. So I was really happy to welcome Minister Dalidakis, of the Victorian government, to meet last week with local government people in my electorate. I thank him and his department for the support they're going to give Victoria for mobile phone blackspots. Now to the Commonwealth: it's your turn to come to the party with round 4. As the new year gets underway, I'll continue to fight for trains and mobile phone coverage. (Time expired)

See this speech in context