Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In Melbourne we have seen pictures of our Sydney Prime Minister crouching down outside the Melbourne Club prior to taking selfies of himself on trains and trams. But these selfies aside, we want someone to actually fund public transport, not just take pictures of himself. Just like his predecessor, the Prime Minister is refusing to give Victoria funding for its most vital and high-priority transport infrastructure project, Melbourne Metro. As I have said before, new show bag, same content.

Last Friday Anthony Albanese, someone who is knowledgeable and passionate about public transport, visited Melbourne Ports. He stood there with the candidates for Higgins and Goldstein at the Domain Interchange on St Kilda Road reaffirming that Melbourne Metro will be Labor's first priority for infrastructure in Victoria if we are elected at the forthcoming election. The Domain Interchange, currently a major tram interchange, will host a new train station as well as Melbourne Metro, part of a new increased capacity of the train network to link people from Melbourne Ports, Goldstein and the south-eastern suburbs—even Hotham—to hospitals and universities north of Victoria Parade.

The Melbourne City Loop underground is at full capacity at peak hour. There is no room for more trains. The trains are severely overcrowded—something you do not see in the Prime Minister's selfies. Some of the trains where 800 people can fit have 1,200 people on them now—Japanese-style; Tokyo-style.

There has been a 70 per cent increase in people catching trains in Victoria in the past decade, 40 per cent over the past five years. In today's Herald-Sun, an arrogant Sydney minister, Paul Fletcher, said that Infrastructure Australia needs to assess a business case for Melbourne Metro.

But on Infrastructure Australia's web page in 2012 they already had the business case. They assessed it. They found it had top priority in Victoria. In December 2013 it was Victoria's highest-rated project. The East West Link, by contrast, only earned 45 cents for a dollar of public expenditure.

The minister says that political games are not needed and that we can agree. An example of a political game might be then Prime Minister Tony Abbott saying that the government's investment in Victorian infrastructure could only fund East West Link. That was to help his mate, the then short-term Premier of Victoria.

But the point made by the Victorian Treasurer, Mr Pallas, is that only nine per cent of Commonwealth infrastructure money is coming to Victoria. By contrast, 36 per cent is going to New South Wales. The people of Victoria are being cheated by this current government. If you are sitting on a crowded tram in Toorak Road in Higgins, or if you are sitting in a crowded train on the Sandringham Line coming in from Goldstein, think of this arrogant Sydney minister and his arrogant government trying to deny people from Victoria the necessary money for the essential building of our public transport.