Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was recently in Frankston with the Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, where we held a town-hall-style Q&A for local residents. It was a great success, with standing room only at the Frankston Mechanics Institute.

I was unsurprised when each of the Liberal Party's big three broken promises in Frankston—NBN, the electrification of the Baxter line and school funding—were raised. Residents of Frankston recalled how in 2013 the then communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said that every house in Australia would have access to a world-class NBN by 2016. Then, once that promise was broken, the Prime Minister came to Frankston in 2015 to announce that all premises in the seat of Dunkley would be connected by 2017. That promise, too, was broken, and earlier this year, the new member for Dunkley, Mr Crewther, told Frankston residents that they would not get the NBN until 2019.

With the Liberals having broken their promise to Frankston on the NBN twice already, why should local residents believe them now? I would go so far as to say that they do not. The Liberals have simply no credibility left, and the new member for Dunkley has only added his name to the Turnbull government's list of broken promises.

From the failure of the NBN to the failure that is the Baxter train line electrification: in the dying days of the 2016 election campaign, the Liberal Party matched Labor's commitment to fund a business case for the electrification of the Baxter train line but then did not deliver a cent in the 2017 budget. This is an important project and the business case should be underway but it is not—another betrayal of Frankston residents. According to Public Transport Victoria data, 58 per cent of travellers to Frankston station come from more than 20 minutes away. The business case, had it been funded in the budget would have been a significant step forward to electrifying the Baxter train line, to the associated improvement in social mobility access to the city and to the work opportunities that come with it.

But this government's incompetence does not stop with the NBN or the Baxter train line. There are 44 schools in the city of Frankston. It is a young and vibrant community, with thousands of students that would benefit from Labor's plan for schools. The Abbott-Turnbull government's broken promise to match Labor dollar for dollar on school funding is the last straw for Frankston residents. Schools and students in the city of Frankston are worse off under a Liberal government, and the Liberal member for Dunkley continues to sit on his hands as his government cuts from school to school and from classroom to classroom across the city of Frankston.

The Liberals have broken their promises to Frankston residents on the NBN, on the Baxter line electrification and on school funding. The Turnbull government has abandoned the city of Frankston; the member for Dunkley stands by and says nothing. The good people of the city of Frankston have had enough, and rightly so. The Liberals have had three strikes; it is time to throw them out and let Labor deliver on the NBN, on the Baxter line and on schools.