Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

The deputy leader opposite does this constantly, and I appreciate the protection of the chair. It is a constant interjection.

Honourable members interjecting—

She's doing it even now. Can I just say thank you very much to the member for Gilmore for the question. She knows just how important infrastructure investments are for our regions and for our cities. But, more importantly, she knows how important it is that when you promise to deliver infrastructure, it is actually delivered. That is why reforming the $120 billion infrastructure investment pipeline is so incredibly important. The previous government left this pipeline in a total mess, riddled with projects that were simply underfunded, had no funding partner, had not actually had proper cost-benefit analysis done and had not got the support of the states and territories. They were poorly scoped and were simply unable to be delivered. We saw the pipeline grow from 150 projects to 800 projects, a large number of which were under $50 million and simply could never be delivered.

If the previous government somehow thought that they were going to deliver every single one of those 800 projects that were poorly funded, under scoped and not supported by the states and territories, then they had rocks in their heads. That is why we have had to look closely at this infrastructure investment pipeline. We want to make sure that if we promise a project, we actually deliver the project. That is what our regions deserve, it's what our rural communities deserve and it's what our cities absolutely deserve.

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