Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator McDonald for her question. I know how passionate she is about building better infrastructure in Queensland, her home state, in particular, but right across the country. That's exactly what the government is getting on with doing. We have a record investment in infrastructure rolling out around our country right now—about $100 billion over the next 10 years. Never before has an Australian government funded more infrastructure at one point in time: 130 major projects are funded and under construction at the moment. They are supporting 85,000 jobs around Australia. That's enough jobs to fill up ANZ Stadium in Sydney. Enough jobs to fill up a football stadium are being created by this government's infrastructure package.

In the short space of time of this question I don't have time to go through all those 130 projects, of course, but I will just quickly go around the country to give a flavour. For example, in Victoria, in Senator Henderson's area, we have $2 billion being invested in fast rail from Melbourne to Geelong—a project she has fought for, I know, for a long time. We have $4 billion going to the Urban Congestion Fund, helping to cut travel times in our major cities around the country. There is $4½ billion being invested in the Roads of Strategic Importance program. That program is all about increasing productivity in our mining, agriculture and tourism sectors to create more jobs, not just through construction. That's why we have upgrades like Tennant Creek to Townsville, which will help unlock that mineral corridor there, and the mango roads in the Northern Territory. We're just going into mango season. You all know that we'll have better mangoes coming soon, because, on smoother roads just near Darwin, where they are grown, there will be less bruising of the mangoes. Karratha to Mount Tom Price will help open up whole new mining opportunities—particularly in rare earths, lithium and mineral sands—that exist in Western Australia. There is a lot more that I'm not going to have time to get through, but it's great to have such good news for Australians and to get them into a job.