Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As another year continues, we see the traffic in Melbourne getting worse and worse by the week. In fact, most reports now say that traffic in Melbourne is even worse than in Sydney. That is something that no Melburnian would ever have believed—that our traffic could be worse than Sydney's. And what have we got in Victoria? We've got the Labor Party federally supporting Daniel Andrews locally to spend $1.3 billion cancelling the contract to build the East West Link. Now the Labor Party has plans to funnel an additional 100,000 cars onto the Eastern Freeway. The forgotten people of Melbourne are those who live in our outer suburbs—those in the eastern suburbs who are spending more and more time on the Eastern Freeway.

We saw the Labor Party spending $1.3 billion of taxpayers' money to stop the East West Link being built, and now we see a state government that doesn't want to accept $3 billion in federal funding to get the East West Link built. Can we say, and I commend Prime Minister Morrison, that we are committed to building the East West Link. We have $3 billion on the table, because we know that every minute you spend in your car in traffic is less time you get to spend with your family. It can often be the difference between seeing your children at the end of a long day at work or not seeing them at all. That's why we'll build the East West Link.