Trent Zimmerman (North Sydney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Cities, Urban Infrastructure and Population. Will the minister explain why the government believes in delivering essential transport services? What is the government doing to act on that belief by delivering on congestion-busting projects, including in Sydney and its surrounds?

Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Minister for Cities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for North Sydney for his question. As the member for North Sydney knows, Australia has some of the greatest cities in the world, which are frequently recognised as amongst the most livable, but they're almost amongst the fastest-growing cities in the world—

Dr Freelander interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Macarthur, cease interjecting.

Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Minister for Cities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and that brings some congestion. Residents know this and we understand this. We have a plan to deal with this congestion, and it consists of a number of parts. The first element, actually, is having a better planning framework where our population projections are better married with state infrastructure plans so that, in the future, we never have the situation where we have a Premier of New South Wales, like Bob Carr, saying that Sydney is full and not building infrastructure, and yet, a few years later, we have Prime Minister Rudd turbo-charging the population growth. That's the first part.

The second part is a decentralisation agenda: take the pressure off the big cities and support the growth of the smaller states, like South Australia, and some of the regional areas that have growth ambitions.

But the third element of this plan is a massive injection of congestion-busting infrastructure right across the country. We have $75 billion worth of congestion-busting infrastructure in every single major capital city occurring right now, including in the city of Sydney. In Sydney, we have important projects, such as the WestConnex project and the NorthConnex project. We have a massive infrastructure spend in the Western Sydney Airport and the development at Western Sydney surrounding that. These massive road and rail projects will help people to be able to get home from work so they spend less time in traffic and more time at home. That's what we believe in. We believe in investing in this infrastructure so that you're spending more time with your family and less time in traffic and on the roads.

We will continue to build this infrastructure. We will continue to work in New South Wales with the New South Wales government and work co-operatively with them. What the people of Sydney and the people of New South Wales need is certainty that we can continue with these plans. They need certainty that we will continue to back the WestConnex and continue to back the Western Sydney Airport and these other projects.

What they don't need is uncertainty. If we want to avoid uncertainty in the future, then the people of Wentworth have a very important decision. They need to back a candidate who will support these congestion-busting plans. They need to back a person who will support our plans and who will back those plans to deal with congestion, to ease the population pressures on the big cities and make our cities even better. (Time expired)