Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Ten months, sorry—even worse. It's a foretaste of what the people of New South Wales can expect under the new Premier, Chris Minns, and Labor. Of course, we're used to Labor saying one thing before the election and doing something else after the election, and we'll see this in New South Wales. It's not just in infrastructure. We've seen it across all things. I'm sure senators of the Greens party are aware of promises that were made in green areas that haven't come through since the election. We're seeing that in superannuation. We're seeing that in energy prices. Regional Australia doesn't vote for you, because they see through you. It's because Labor doesn't understand our communities. When it comes down to promises, the regions and the bush are expendable to Labor. Regional infrastructure is a cost of doing business. It doesn't just affect National Party seats. It affects Labor Party seats. I'm looking at Hunter, Dan Repacholi's seat. There's a great business waiting to open up in Mandalong Road. The Lake Macquarie council has a Labor mayor. It is unsure whether that funding, which would open up huge potential in that area, will go forward under this budget. So what we see is more of the same: the experience of 10 months under this. We are going to get the same in New South Wales.

What does that mean for the Great Western Highway? The Liberals and Nationals understand how critical the Great Western Highway is to upgrade the Central West. Getting that pathway through would open up freight lines, potential businesses and so many other things. It's a project that has been spoken of for decades, with its ability to transform travel for thousands of people and tens of millions of dollars worth of business. But again the Labor campaign bus never made it that far, so they've never seen what it's going to do. The last federal government and the last state government promised to commit to that Great Western Highway tunnel as an essential piece of nation-building, but the weekend's result has ended 20 years of progress on this vital upgrade. Labor has promised to scrap the tunnel and is not prepared to invest in the big infrastructure projects that keep the state going.

It's becoming clear day after day that Labor will not build the infrastructure that regional Australia, including regional New South Wales, needs. New South Wales Labor built nothing for 16 years when they were last in office, and, now they have won election, they will go back to doing what they were doing. We've seen this government already slash and burn regional programs and projects all over New South Wales, with a growing list of broken promises. At the last election, the slogan was, 'It won't be easy under Albanese,' who is now Prime Minister. We've seen that, for mortgage holders and superannuants, the statement has been proved right. To the new New South Wales government I say: do the right thing and keep regional New South Wales moving, because at the next state election I think it will be, 'Nobody wins under Chris Minns.'