Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Chifley. I thank the member for Paterson. It was not $500 million, not $100 million, not $50 million and not even a million; it was zero. All of us in our electorates have significant and worthy projects. In my own electorate, for example, there is the Glendale interchange, the Muswellbrook Bypass, the Singleton Bypass and a link between Cessnock and the Hunter Expressway. The list is very long, but we received zero. Do you know what happened when we were in government for six years? We built the Hunter Expressway, $1.6 billion. We built the third rail track so we get our coal to port more quickly and more efficiently. We rebuilt our primary schools. We put in place the classrooms and other facilities that they so desperately needed. I had kids sitting on the floor in the halls of some of my public schools. We invested heavily. We invested more in our hospitals. We created more GPs. We gave money over to help the GPs to upgrade their surgeries. We put boom gates on our dangerous railway level crossings. The list just goes on and on and on. But, since this government came to office, the money has just dried up. In five years, there has been no money for the Singleton Bypass, no money for the Muswellbrook Bypass and no money for the Glendale interchange—just nothing.

So, when my constituents look at this tax package, they also think about that. They are asking themselves why they are being punished for voting for the Labor Party. That's the question they're asking: 'Why are we being punished? We're not getting any infrastructure, our pensions are being cut, it's getting more expensive to go to the doctor, our kids are having their funding cut in their schools, and we've lost the agreement on our preschools.' They wonder what is going on. No wonder this government is so unpopular in my electorate. They are doing the wrong thing by our people in the Hunter region. They should hang their collective heads in shame. It's a terrible way to treat communities no matter where they are geographically located and no matter how they vote.

See this speech in context