Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Antic for the question. The Prime Minister today outlined the next phase of the government's JobMaker plan to support Australia and Australians' recovery from COVID-19. He announced that almost $72 billion of major infrastructure projects across Australia will now be fast-tracked under an agreement struck between the state, federal and territory governments. It will see approval times slashed by half and it will see the creation of 66,000 jobs.

As a government, we are also committing to a further $1.5 billion to immediately commence work on small priority projects identified by the states and the territories. One billion dollars will be allocated to priority projects which are shovel-ready and half-a-billion dollars will be reserved specifically to target road safety works. This builds on the $7.8 billion worth of projects we've brought forward since November of last year. Fifteen major projects are fast-tracked for approval under a bilateral model between the Commonwealth and the states and territories. The projects include emergency town water projects in New South Wales; road, rail and iron projects in Western Australia; the Inland Rail from Melbourne to Brisbane; the Marinus Link between Tasmania and Victoria; and of course, Senator Antic, in your home state, the Olympic Dam extension in South Australia. These 15 job-creating investments will be brought forward by targeting a 50 per cent reduction in Commonwealth assessment and approval times for major projects from an average of 3.5 years to 21 months.