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

The growth in this infrastructure investment pipeline won't surprise anyone. Where was the major growth from 2016 to 2019? What was happening in that time? There were election campaigns on! That's the way in which those opposite used public money in infrastructure to invest in projects that suited their political purposes right the way across the country—so they could put out a press release. I've said before that you cannot drive on a press release!

We are doing the hard work of cleaning up the mess that those opposite left an incredibly important part of this budget in. One hundred and twenty billion dollars has to be delivered through the infrastructure investment pipeline, and it can only be delivered if we look at every project. We will look at the cost of those projects and make sure that we can actually deliver them—that we have funding partners for them. We are cleaning up the mess that has been left by those opposite, to make sure that we can deliver infrastructure in our rural communities, in our regions and right the way across our thriving and growing suburbs.

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