Mark Arbib (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Government Service Delivery) Share this | Hansard source

Can I just say in response to Senator Cash that the Liberal senators on the other side of the chamber actually voted for that first stimulus package. Any criticism she has of the package should have been raised at the time because she, along with all the other Liberal senators, actually voted for it.

It was quite interesting to hear the Deputy Leader of the Opposition talking about the doubling and tripling of the first home buyers grant on the Q&A program. She said, ‘I wish I hadn’t voted for it.’ I found that fascinating. I hope that all those first home buyers out there who have been rushing into the marketplace know about that, because there are 59,000 of them stimulating the economy. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition wishes that she had not voted for stimulus payments to pensioners. She wishes she had not voted to make payments to pensioners, carers, disability pensioners and veterans. These are the people who received the cash bonuses in round 1 of the stimulus package.

That was only round 1. There has also been round 2. The coalition talk about cash splashes, but the truth is that 70 per cent of the stimulus package is for infrastructure. That is a fact. Infrastructure was round 2 of the stimulus package. These were shovel-ready projects, stimulating the economy, with work for tradespeople, small business and local contractors. This work is being rolled out as we speak. Two weeks ago I was in Tasmania turning the sod on the largest road project Tasmania has ever had—the Brighton bypass. That project will create 280 jobs in Tasmania. There are projects all across the country. This is what the stimulus package is about. The coalition do not support it. They do not support this infrastructure because they do not think it is high-quality infrastructure.

So we move on from the shovel-ready projects to the budget. In the budget there is $22 billion for nation-building infrastructure to fix our highways and rail lines. The truth is that we will be spending more on rail over the next five years than the coalition spent in their total 12 years. There is a doubling of the roads budget. We are fixing ports and making our economy productive for the future. The coalition often talk about the debt we are leaving to our young people. We are building the infrastructure of tomorrow, the infrastructure of the future. In 20 years time we will be able to tell our children and grandchildren that their schools, science labs and language labs, the roads they are driving on, the rail lines and other infrastructure were built during the global recession because the government had the courage to spend money to stimulate the economy and protect jobs. Despite what senators on the other side of the chamber think, we are actually into protecting jobs. That is what we are about—supporting jobs during the global recession. That is something that those on the other side really could not care less about.