Alan Griffin (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It will come as no surprise to those opposite or in fact those here that I rise also to speak about the opening of the Regional Rail Link. This is a tremendous initiative dealing with congestion on the public transport network in our second biggest state, which has the metropolitan area that will in fact, in the years ahead, overtake Sydney and be the largest metropolitan area in this country.

It is a tremendous project that goes to the question of dealing with what is occurring in our regions as well as the needs of metropolitan users. It will produce significant improvements in the system both in terms of travel times and in terms of the total number of passengers that can be dealt with. And it is something about the future. If we do not deal with the public transport issues in regional and metropolitan areas of this country, we are going to have massive issues in the future. That is why this government needs to think about the importance of public transport in an overall approach to dealing with transport issues across this nation.

One of the problems we have is a Prime Minister who wrote in his manifesto Battlelines that it was all about cars and nothing about anything else. He has taken this into government and now we are seeing that if the situation is about infrastructure, they will say, 'Put it up to Infrastructure Australia.' But if it is not about roads and bridges, they are not interested. The Deputy Prime Minister did attend on the weekend—I understand that, it is Commonwealth money involved. But let's be clear about that: Commonwealth money committed by Labor.