Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) acknowledges the Government's $2.57 billion in funding in the 2022 October Budget for the infrastructure Victoria, and Victorians need, including:

(a) $2.2 billion for the Suburban Rail Loop;

(b) $57 million for the Ison Road Rail Overpass in Wyndham;

(c) $150 million for the Camerons Lane Interchange in Beveridge; and

(d) $125 million to upgrade Barwon Heads Road;

(2) notes this funding will make journeys quicker, and make sure Victorians can get home to their families safely, and comes after a decade of neglect for Victorian Infrastructure from the former Government; and thanks the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government and the Prime Minister for working with the Victorian Government.

After a decade of neglect under the former Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Liberal government, I'm pleased to report that federal investment in the seat of Lalor is back, federal infrastructure investment is back and so are serious processes to ensure that projects stack up. After a decade of Victoria being starved of infrastructure investment by the Liberals, the budget handed down by Labor the last time this House met involved $2.57 billion in funding for Victorian infrastructure. I'm sure the members for McEwen, Corangamite and Jagajaga, who will speak after me, will explain how this investment will benefit the people in other parts of the great state of Victoria. But this is a big win for the outer west.

The budget includes joint funding with the state Andrews Labor government to build the $114 million Ison Road Rail Overpass in my community in Wyndham, with the construction to begin next year. Known to some as stage 1 of the Wyndham Westlink, this project will construct a road overpass bridge across the Melbourne-Geelong railway line, extending the South Road towards Browns Road and connecting with the local section of the Ison Road to be constructed by Wyndham City Council. The project scope includes a new four-lane road and a bridge over the rail line that is future-proofed for six lanes and has a shared-user path for active transport. This will ink the new and booming suburbs in the west of Wyndham to the freeway.

The current residents of Wyndham Vale, Manor Lakes, Harpley and Jubilee won't be the only beneficiaries of this city-shaping project. By 2036 this road is expected to have almost 30,000 daily users. As a result, by these residents having the direct link to the freeway, almost 30,000 cars will be off the roads rather than travelling into Werribee only to head back out again to the freeway. This is what you call conjecture busting: forward thinking, planned for our growth area.

While the Victorian state Labor government have done amazing things regarding infrastructure in our growing community—like removing the three level crossings in Wyndham; spending $1.8 billion on the Western Roads Upgrade, $1.2 billion in the north of my electorate; expanding parking options at local train stations and providing more services on the regional rail link—it requires federal and state governments to work together to deliver this type of city-shaping infrastructure. For almost 10 years our community, one of the fastest-growing in the nation, was starved of federal infrastructure investment. This bridge was committed to by Labor in opposition at the previous election, and those opposite failed to do that funding in the last term. Unlike when the Prime Minister was infrastructure minister and our community saw huge infrastructure investment worth over $4 billion in local infrastructure projects, we saw nothing under the Liberals. My message to locals is this: we finally have Spring Street and Canberra working together to deliver this project. Let's continue this collaboration beyond 26 November.

For context, we got nothing out of the state Liberals the last time they were in office—not one school built in the fastest-growing community in the country in their last four-year term. You can't trust people who claim to have the solutions to problems X and Y when they did nothing about it when they had the chance. That's the truth. Only federal and state Labor governments will deliver for my growing community. That is evidenced here by the commitment to this bridge, to this overpass that will take 30,000 cars out of the middle of Werribee and put them directly onto the M1.

I can't wait until this bridge opens. I can't wait until people can find their way onto that freeway more quickly and save themselves 15 or 20 minutes on their daily commute each way, simply by having a state and federal Labor government that is committed to improving the lives of people who live in our growth corridors and committed to ensuring that projects stack up and deliver for communities.

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