David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party, Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

There is a lot of argument going over here. Everyone knows that infrastructure drives economic growth, connects communities, leads employment and in many cases, particularly in road infrastructure, leads to safer, more efficient transport and saves lives. But the difference is that we are actually delivering things, whether it is roads, rail, bridges, airports, connectivity—in the form of fixing mobile phone black spots and actually delivering the much-waited-for NBN—or social infrastructure like increased aged-care building.

In my area, in the electorate of Lyne, on the North Coast of New South Wales, you only have to look outside the metropolis of Wauchope to nearby east Wauchope, called Port Macquarie, and you will see an extra $2 billion being spent on the Pacific Highway. The Pacific Highway has an extra $2 billion put back in and it is actually being built. There is $1 billion being spent just between the Oxley Highway and Kempsey, creating over 900 direct jobs and 2,000 indirect jobs—really driving economic growth. Then there is the Bucketts Way between Gloucester and Taree, extra Roads to Recovery funding, extra Black Spot funding and bridges to recovery. You only have to look at other states, for example the northern Australia roads—beef roads. You only have to look at the Bruce Highway: there is an extra $2 billion being put into the Bruce Highway. And there is the Toowoomba Second Range Crossing—the list goes on and on.

For rail infrastructure, as I mentioned, we have Inland Rail that is finally having serious amounts of capital put in by the coalition government. That is $893 million from Melbourne to Brisbane. It is going to be game changing for freight and all the economy that drives from it. There is the Moreton Bay Rail, the Gold Coast Light Rail and the Murray Basin Rail Project.

Dams have driven communities and civilisations since ancient Egyptian times. Australia has not had anything done on dams until this coalition government committed—

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