James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to start by congratulating the government on a record they hold. No government in the history of the Commonwealth has put more infrastructure funding on hold than they have. It is an unbelievable achievement they have pulled off in their first 12 months of government, when they said, 'We're going to stop everything, hang on, stop,' and ground to an absolute halt over $100 billion worth of very significant investments in communities like mine. One of those projects that are part of their record building-on-hold program is a very important project in South Australia that would finally get Highway 1 out of the suburbs of Adelaide. Adelaide is the only city where Highway 1 runs through our suburbs, and it's absolutely ridiculous and it is a great injustice to the people of Adelaide, particularly in the eastern suburbs through my electorate. To get that heavy freight out of the suburbs we need to build the Truro Bypass, and we would've, were it not for the fact that we had a new government elected last year who put that project on hold. This is a project the state Labor government have stood by. The former Liberal government put the funding in, and it was all set to happen. But now it's on hold.

It's absolutely in the budget. You might want to look this one up. It's funded by—

Here we go. This is good. We're getting all this on the record. I'm very pleased about this.

The claim is that it was not funded. Apparently, the Truro bypass was not funded. I'll tell Premier Peter Malinauskas that that funding's not coming. He will be very interested to hear the interjections from those opposite about infrastructure funding into South Australia. I guess the principle is that everything under the review apparently is not in the budget and won't be funded. Like the Black Spot Program. That's all over, is it? Apparently that's not funded. The interjections have stopped now! I'm suddenly not hearing anything. I think it's dawned on them that their 90-day review was of everything.

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