Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

Listen to them now. They're still laughing. They're still, effectively, laughing at the Australian people. The Australian people backed this plan, and the arrogance of the Labor Party to still be laughing at the things which we offered the Australian people just two months ago, which they supported and supported around the country—and we know how strongly people supported this plan in Queensland in particular. They wanted energy security. They wanted jobs up there, and that's what we were offering.

Let's have a look at some of our economic plans. We took to the election one of the biggest economic tax relief agendas in many elections. We wanted to lower taxes for 94 per cent of all Australians, with a particular focus on the low- and middle-income earners immediately. And so what have we done? The first bill that we took into this parliament once we were elected was precisely that bill—the bill which the Labor Party opposed. And that is delivering over $1,000 to every individual on lower and medium incomes right now as soon as they put in their tax returns. As the Treasurer has outlined, a great many people have already done that.

We're backing small business as well by lowering their taxes and extending the instant asset write-off. People who have been following the debate would know that just in the last couple of days we have backed our farmers as well, because our farmers are doing it particularly tough because of the drought. As members who have been listening closely would know, we have spent the last two days setting up a drought fund so that there will be money both now and in the future for when drought inevitably occurs in this great wide country of ours.

I'll tell you what else we're going to do. We, over the next three years and beyond, will be investing record amounts in infrastructure right across the country. We announced in the budget this year, just a month or two before the election, a $100 billion infrastructure plan. That was an increase from just 12 months earlier, when we announced a record $75 billion. You say we don't have an infrastructure plan. I think you are just deliberately turning your ears and eyes off. There is $100 billion and we have 150 major projects going on as we speak, with a further 150 major projects being planned that will be delivered in the very short term.

Just two weeks ago we opened the M4 tunnel for WestConnex. This is a project that will take 10,000 trucks off Parramatta Road. It's a project that will save people who live in Parramatta today and drive into the city 40 minutes every single day—20 minutes each way. Do you know what the opposition said in relation to this multi-billion-dollar project? They said that they're not supporting it because it's 'a road to nowhere'. Do you know where it goes? It goes to the western suburbs of Sydney. We don't think that's a road to nowhere, but the Leader of the Opposition said precisely that just two years ago. He said that, if he became infrastructure minister, he would not put a cent towards that $16 billion game-changing project in Western Sydney.

Another great project in Western Sydney that is underway as we speak is Western Sydney Airport. Already a billion cubic metres of dirt have been moved, and this project will be the single largest earthmoving project in Australian history, finally delivering a second international airport in the western suburbs of Sydney. Again, it's a massive project that the Labor Party, despite indicating they might support it, just could not get around to supporting. In my home state of Victoria, and in Melbourne in particular, we're getting the Melbourne Airport Rail Link finally done. This is a project that, again, should have been done probably two or three decades ago. Which government is actually going to deliver it? It is this government, with $5 billion on the table, ready to go. In South Australia, we've got the North-South Corridor—again, investing billions of dollars. In Western Australia, we've got the Metronet. We're investing more and more there. We've got the Tonkin Highway upgrades. In Queensland, we've got the M1 upgrades. We've got 166 Urban Congestion Fund projects, and I'm negotiating for state ministers right now to get those up and running and delivered over the next few years. This is a real agenda to make a real difference to people's lives, just as that WestConnex project, which the Labor Party opposed, is doing right now.

What if we talk about the environment? We've got our emissions reduction targets, which we are going well on. We're tracking towards a 28 per cent reduction by 2030. We'll meet our 2020 target—in fact, we'll beat our 2020 target—and we'll commit to our Paris commitments, which we will deliver on. On the health agenda, record funding is going to hospitals over the next few years. And we will continue to list a record number of medicines on the PBS. They are absolutely life-changing medicines, literally, for tens of thousands of people around this country. The government are doing it because we're able to manage the economy, run a budget surplus and fund more medicines, whereas the Labor Party had to stop funding medicines because they ran out of money. That is the absolute truth. This government runs a strong economy so that we can do things like fund medicines and make absolutely life-changing differences to people who can now afford some of the medicines that they could otherwise not afford.

In the education space, we continue to invest record amounts to schools right across the country. Ten thousand schools—every single one—are getting record amounts of funding. Guess how we do that. Again, by running a strong economy. In relation to national security, one of the first items of business is to reverse the bill that the Labor Party supported, with the crossbench, to make it much easier for illegal arrivals to come to this country. We have always been strong on border protection. We will continue to be strong on border protection, and that will be an ongoing agenda item. I could go on all afternoon in relation to our agenda, but the truth of the matter is: the quiet Australians supported us, and they did not support the Australian Labor Party.

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