Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Minister for Cities) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for La Trobe for his question on the budget. Labor has stopped asking questions on the budget, we point out. After seven questions, they've stopped asking. No more questions on the budget! On the budget, I can report that last night we put $4 billion into the Urban Congestion Fund and, over the last month alone, we've been busting congestion right across the great cities of our nation, including in the member for La Trobe's electorate—on Racecourse Road, on McGregor Road, on the key intersections along the Princes Highway and, last night, duplicating Wellington Road in his electorate. It's such a congested piece of road. That will be fixed, as well as other areas.

This Urban Congestion Fund is just one element of our population plan, which is aimed at easing the congestion in our big cities and supporting the growth of some of the regional areas. Another part of that plan is our 20-year fast rail plan. In that plan, our aim is to connect our big capital cities to the satellite regional centres. Over the next 20 years, we hope that many like that will be done because it will enable people to reside in those regional centres and very easily commute into the big capital cities on a regular basis. We are starting with the first one, and we have got $2 billion on the table to get the—

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