Vince Connelly (Stirling, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was a little perplexed today when I read about this MPI. I was wracking my brain thinking, why would it be that the Labor Party would be casting such spurious and inaccurate assertions? Then it came to me, and I've finally figured it out. I've figured out why they would be accusing us of not having a plan. It's because those opposite do not have a plan. They are also clearly disappointed that we in the coalition have a plan and that plan is working. I'm very pleased to point this out, and I greatly appreciate the opportunity to point out some aspects of this plan which are absolutely working. I'll get to some of the detail about the plan in a moment, but I will say first of all what sits behind this plan, the things which we in the coalition believe. We believe that Australian people have a great deal of personal initiative. We want to set free the aspirations that we know Australians hold. We deal with them back in our electorates and we back them 100 per cent. We've seen that initiative displayed time and time again. We don't want to hold them back. We don't want to tax them to the hilt, like we saw proposed by Labor at the last election campaign. They proposed the introduction of $387 billion in new taxes. No, in fact we are cutting taxes. We also believe in families. We want families to be spending more time with each other once they've had a hard day at work, and that's why we're investing in infrastructure so heavily as well.

I turn now to some of the specifics of this plan. This plan will help us to recover our economy, to cement that recovery and create jobs, to guarantee essential services and to protect and secure our interests in a vastly changing world. We're delivering outcomes. For example, in terms of vaccinations, there was certainly some complexity to be managed early in the piece, and for the first million doses there was a period of 47 days for those doses to be administered. I'm very pleased, as the Prime Minister announced just today, that our fourth lot of one million doses has been delivered in just 10 days. We are cementing our economic recovery to create jobs. We're providing tax cuts. In my electorate of Stirling, we are seeing 62,105 residents receiving tax cuts worth up to $2,500. We're enabling 21,000 businesses in my electorate to write off the full value of any eligible asset they purchase.

We are also building the infrastructure for the future. Again, I'll give a couple of examples from the wonderful electorate of Stirling. One of the great problem intersections is at Erindale Road and Reid Highway. We're devoting $2 million to a business case to look at what methods can be used to free up that traffic flow. For the residents who live in that area—and I know this because I hear from them regularly—that intersection is a bit of a nightmare. Another great initiative is one the previous Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure, Minister Tudge, very kindly and thoughtfully oversaw, via his department, with the allocation of $2 million, which is a commitment for a business case for trackless tram. I hear people say, 'Trackless tram, what's that about?' I can give a bit of an overview. This is essentially the size of a tram, it fits about 200 passengers on board, but it doesn't require the heavy infrastructure—the rail tracks, the overhead lines. It runs on a dedicated line and frees up traffic flow greatly. It's also a much greener solution than having all of those cars on the road. That's the sort of thing that this government is doing. It's getting behind projects that help Australians spend less time in traffic and more time with their families. It gets cars off the road, reduces pollution, and alleviates parking in those key areas that people want to be, like Scarborough Beach.

And we're continuing to deliver the essential services we all rely on—for example, $17.7 billion in additional funding to aged care; and the listing on the PBS of new products like Oripro, which is manufactured in my electorate, in Belcatta, to help prevent premature births. What a fantastic outcome. So there are many ways, including in defence, where we're spending $270 billion, whereas Labor actually ripped $18 billion out of defence. We're doing this all for the future of all Australians.

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