Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications and Cyber Security) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Lalor for moving this important motion, and I'm proud to speak in support of it. In the last days of the 2019 federal election, a desperate Prime Minister announced that a re-elected Morrison government would invest in Melbourne's west through a city deal with the region. Now, nearly 1,000 days later, with the next federal election imminent, he still hasn't delivered. This Prime Minister has an announcement for every occasion, but he always goes missing when it comes time to deliver. He's the travelling salesman Prime Minister: he pops up, makes an announcement and then moves on. He's like the bloke you meet on the beach in Bali offering to sell you a genuine Rolex and promising that he'll send the warranty in the mail.

This Prime Minister isn't a PM for all Australians. He's only interested in Australians who have something to offer him. If you live in a Liberal electorate or in a marginal seat, this Prime Minister has billions of dollars of pork-barrelling and rorts for you, but when it comes to the growth areas in electorates like mine in Melbourne's west, the Morrison government just doesn't care. Those areas don't show up in the Prime Minister for Sydney's political priorities.

The Andrews Labor government in Victoria is doing its bit to fund and deliver infrastructure for the people in Melbourne's west. I see it in my electorate every day, with $1.5 billion for the biggest investment in health infrastructure in Victoria's history, the new Footscray Hospital; the multibillion-dollar West Gate Tunnel project; and new schools being built and level crossings being removed across the electorate. When Labor was last in power federally, we worked with the Victorian government to deliver new infrastructure for Melbourne's west. The Regional Rail Link project, a $4.7 billion project, and the $11 billion Melbourne Metro Rail tunnel were transformative investments in the public transport infrastructure of Melbourne's west.

When the Morrison-Joyce government is refusing to work with the Victorian government to deliver the city deal that it promised Melbourne's west during the last federal election, media announcements from the Morrison government aren't worth the paper they are written on. My constituents can't use a media conference to get to work. They can't use a press release to get to school. They need real infrastructure. They need a PM who delivers, not just announces. Yet the Prime Minister asks my constituents who they trust to deliver for them!

The Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison governments have abandoned Melbourne's west. Under this government, we've seen manufacturing jobs in my community decimated. We lost 2½ thousand manufacturing jobs when Toyota closed manufacturing after the Abbott government dared the car industry to leave Australia. We lost 1,500 jobs at the Williamstown shipyards, which closed under this government. Earlier this year, we lost over 300 jobs when the Altona refinery closed, despite the incompetent Minister Taylor saying that he would save refinery jobs in Australia. In May, more than 150 jobs were lost at Qenos. In spite of this, underlining how arrogant and out of touch this PM is, two weeks ago, he chose the Toyota Altona site for a desperate media announcement, attempting to distance himself from his own ridiculous scare campaign on electric vehicles during the 2019 election.

Melbourne's west is sick of being taken for granted by this Prime Minister for Sydney. It won't forget how it was abandoned by this government during the pandemic and it won't forget how it was abandoned by the policies of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison governments for eight long years. For my constituents, 2021 was a lost year, because of this government's failures on vaccines and quarantine. The eight long years of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government have been wasted years for Melbourne's west, through the neglect of this government. The people of Melbourne's west deserve a government that's on their side. They need an Albanese Labor government to deliver roads and rail investment, not just announce it. They need an Albanese Labor government to secure jobs and a future made in Australia.

Only Labor understands how vital it is to build a diverse economy and ensure that we generate secure, permanent, full-time jobs for Australians to make things here. Only Labor will provide a $15 billion national reconstruction fund to rebuild manufacturing capacity in Australia that has been lost over the last eight years, because Labor believes that the next decade should be the one where we make things at home here again, with Australian workers, Australian resources and Australian ingenuity. An Albanese Labor government will ensure that the transport infrastructure of the future will feature more Australian jobs in the supply chain. It will be an incredible opportunity to rejuvenate the manufacturing sector and the manufacturing jobs of Melbourne's west. We will create a national rail manufacturing plan to identify and optimise the opportunities to build trains here. We'll train thousands of workers by ensuring that one in 10 workers on major government projects is an apprentice, a trainee or a cadet—skills for Australian workers of the next generation—and we'll ensure that the working families in Melbourne's west have a better life by making child care cheaper, tackling wage growth and helping to close the gender pay gap. The next federal election can't come soon enough for my constituents.

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