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

I am very pleased to speak on this matter of public importance. My first point is that I don't know where the member for Ballarat has been. If she got out of Canberra and got out of her office, she would see construction going on in every major capital city right now. She will see it going on in regional centres across our country. It is not for no reason that many commentators are saying we are in an infrastructure boom right now—and that is because we have projects right across this great nation dealing with congestion, supporting the economy and addressing community safety and road safety this very second. In fact, since we came to government, 900 projects have been identified to be funded, 280 projects have already been completed and 160 major projects are underway right now across this country. There are 160 major projects underway, under construction, this very second. The bitumen has been laid, the bulldozers are going and people are working very hard. Thousands of people are being employed, which is supporting local economies right across this nation. We also have 120 projects in the planning, ready to go. Once that planning is completed the money is there and ready to go. So to suggest that we don't have infrastructure projects going on, as the member for Ballarat is suggesting to this parliament, is, frankly, absolutely wrong.

I could refer back from a financial perspective to just five years ago, when the CEO of Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, Brendan Lyons, said that our plan at that stage represented the largest-ever national infrastructure investment program in Australian history. That was five years ago. Do you know what the size of our infrastructure program was then? It was $50 billion. Do you know what it is five years later? It is now a $100 billion program. Five years ago we had the respected leader of Infrastructure Partnerships Australia saying that this is the biggest program he'd ever seen in Australian history. Five years later we've doubled that again to $100 billion. We have so much infrastructure going on now that some commentators are saying that we're now reaching supply complaints from the construction companies, who may not be able to take too much on. This year we are spending on infrastructure more than double what the Labor Party spent in their last year in office.

So I say to the member for Ballarat: I honestly do not know where you have been. Get out there: go to Sydney, go to Melbourne, go to Adelaide, go to Brisbane, go to Perth, go to Hobart and go to the regional centres and you will see this construction going on all the time. I want to refer specifically to two or three projects, though. I've talked about the aggregate numbers. We have doubled the funding. We have a $100 billion program. We have 160 underway and another 120 planned. Let me at least talk about two or three very large-scale projects. These are projects which in some respects should have been built a long time ago, arguably decades, but it took this government to actually get them underway.

The very first one I'll mention is the Western Sydney Airport. This is a project which has been on the books for literally decades, but within six months of our coming to office we decided that we would get on with the job of building that second airport in Western Sydney. We did the planning work. We immediately put $5.3 billion on the table to get it underway. If the member for Ballarat bothered to go out to Western Sydney she would see the landscape changing before her eyes. Already a million cubic metres of earth has been moved to flatten that enormous landscape out there. When completed it will be the largest earthmoving project in Australian history, creating 11,000 jobs in the process. That's happening right now and it didn't happen under the opposition. They had the opportunity, they talked about it and they said that they wanted it, but for six long years Labor didn't get it done, because they couldn't make the decision.

Look at the next big project: the airport rail link down in Melbourne. Again, to be honest, this rail link should have been built two or three decades ago. This is another one where the Labor Party looked at it, talked about it and said that Melbourne needs a rail link out to the airport. Did they actually do anything about it in their six long years in office? No; nothing. Again it took this government to finally put money on the table. We put $5 billion on the table and said to the state government, 'Join us, please, in delivering this vitally important project for Melbourne and finally connect up Australia's second-busiest airport to the rail network.' They're now committed. We now have a construction schedule starting in 2022 and we will see that job done.

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