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

I thank the member for Bass for her question and for her outstanding advocacy for her electorate as well as for Tasmania as a whole. As you may be aware, over the last week we have announced $3.8 billion worth of infrastructure funding that we were able to bring forward. That included $1.8 billion being spent in the next 18 months alone, on top of the billion dollars which is already being spent. Now, what does this mean? It means more jobs, it means it's great for commuters and, of course, it means it's supporting economic growth as well by being able to get these projects done more quickly.

As the Prime Minister mentioned, we have been working very methodically with the state and territory governments over the last few months to develop up these packages, state by state. Over the last week we have announced packages for Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales, and today we are announcing a $173 million package for Tasmania—the vast majority of which, $95 million, will be spent in the next 18 months alone. That will go towards four major projects. It will go to the Bass Highway corridor, and it means that work can begin late next year. It will go to the Hobart-to-Sorell corridor, including the Hobart Airport interchange; that money can flow immediately and those projects can get underway. There is $42 million for the Midland Highway, which enables the work to continue to be done along that corridor. And money will be able to flow for the Port of Burnie shiploader, and that project will be able to commence by the middle of next year.

As you can see, by bringing these projects forward, we're able to get cracking on more projects, which means more jobs. And, of course, that's not everything that we are doing. That is on top of the 130 major projects which we have underway right now, supporting 85,000 jobs over the lifetime of those projects. And this $100 billion program, of course, is only able to be done—this $3.8 billion, which we're bringing forward—because we've been able to carefully manage the budget through the strict and disciplined financial management which means that we can pay for things like this, as well as cut taxes and, of course, deliver the first budget surplus in 12 years. The contrast is, of course, stark between our disciplined approach to financial management, versus the last time that these people were in office, when they were spending money on overpriced school halls, pink batts, cash for clunkers, sending cheques to dead people and to farm pets—

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