Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

For the benefit of the honourable member for Paterson: you cannot build a road without the detailed planning. Money has to be made available for the construction but also for the detailed planning. That is a simple fact. You cannot just go out and build it.

The road that we are talking about, the Pacific Highway, requires extensive planning. The honourable member for Paterson said it could not possibly be finished by 2016. I have heard and noted every promise, every commitment given by every player about the Pacific Highway over a few decades. The most recent was from the now Deputy Premier of New South Wales, Mr Andrew Stoner, then the Deputy Opposition Leader. He gave a commitment to the 2016 time frame. Everybody has given that commitment. I heard Mr Stoner. I have records of it. I have a file on the Pacific Highway that is knee deep. I have been involved in advocacy, meetings, planning, discussions, debate and in the inevitable funding disputes that the honourable member for Lyne said we should try to avoid. I agree with him, but these have been part and parcel of it since it started. It has only been in the last few years that we have started to get to a situation of agreement and cooperation. I just hope that that continues, because it is absolutely essential.

I found what the honourable member for Paterson said about the figures perplexing. I know the honourable member for Cowper has been bleating in the local media and on the airwaves about there not being new funding et cetera. I do not know why they cannot ever just accept it when funding is made available and say: 'Great. Good on you! Let's get on with the work.' That would be a preferable response but no, they have to go out and sully the waters, disturb people, make them think that nothing is happening. It is just so not true. The maths are simple: $3.1 billion was the previous allocation by this federal government, by the Gillard government. It was started under the Rudd government, continued under the Gillard government and continues again in this budget, with an extra billion dollars in new funding for the Pacific Highway.

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