Nicolle Flint (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure. Would the minister inform the House of developments to connect Flinders University to the rail line, helping thousands of people every day and assisting the South Australian economy?

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

I thank the member for Boothby for her question. As she knows, last Friday the first sod of the Flinders Link rail project was turned. This is a fantastic congestion-busting project that will extend the Adelaide metropolitan rail network to Flinders Medical Centre, Flinders University and the Tonsley Innovation District. I note that the member for Boothby has been a very strong supporter of this $125 million project for a long time. What will it mean for residents in Adelaide, and in her electorate in particular?

First, it's going to make it easier to access Adelaide's largest hospital and it's going to ease the parking pressures which presently exist. Of course it will also ease congestion in Adelaide as a whole by taking thousands of cars off the road. But perhaps the most important thing is that, by linking the campus to the rail network, it will make it more convenient for the 25,000 existing students and also make it more attractive to international students to go to Flinders University. And of course the university believes that this project itself will unlock $1.5 billion worth of their investments into the university, creating thousands of jobs in the process, because, as a result of this project, they will build new student accommodation, health accommodation, health research facilities and retail facilities.

This is just another great joint project by the Morrison and Marshall governments. Overall, we are investing $8.4 billion into South Australia for roads and rail transport there and helping Premier Marshall's drive to make it a turnaround state, in a similar way to the way in which Premier Hodgman is making Tasmania a turnaround state, because we know that, for too long in South Australia, they had a long reign of the former Labor governments, which led to low growth and a mass exodus of people from the country, and, of course, as the energy minister knows, the highest electricity prices in the world. We are changing this, and our infrastructure agenda is a very big part of supporting the regeneration of South Australia as a whole.

This incredible project which we have been discussing, the Flinders Link rail project, is just one of over 150 major projects that we have going on in this country right now—150. That's $9.8 billion being invested this financial year, which is more than double what it was when we first came to office. And of course we have another 150 major projects in the planning, as well as over 166 smaller-scale urban-congestion-busting projects— (Time expired)