Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to answer a couple of questions. In relation to the WestConnex project which the member for Grayndler seems to be opposed to, constantly—

Mr Albanese interjecting—

The WestConnex project is an obsession. As the minister for transport in New South Wales makes the point, for those living in inner city Sydney everything is about getting to Sydney, to the CBD. In fact, what WestConnex actually does is connect Sydney far better for people who are moving around, particularly people like tradespeople who work all across the expanse of Sydney every day. It helps people move right across Sydney, absolutely, every day. It fixes a problem that Labor created with the M5 tunnel, as the member for Grayndler acknowledged earlier—I accept that. It also upgrades roads all around Sydney and the port area as part of WestConnex stage 2. Then, of course, there is the Moorebank project, which the member for Grayndler is also familiar with, which has helped to deal with the freight connections in Sydney. If you look at what we are doing with the WestConnex we are creating a much better connected city with the WestConnex stage 1 and bringing stage 4 together will lead to a better project. This project is evolving and it will become a better project as the process goes on. We are very confident of that. It will create 10,000 jobs in its construction. It is an enormously beneficial project.

Talking about urban policy, we are spending $50 billion in this budget, the vast bulk of it on new projects that will help our cities deal with congestion issues. Fifty per cent of public transport kilometres travelled are by bus. That will continue to be the case. Bus is an important part of our public transport network. Improving the road network will assist. The asset recycling initiative and the state government's commitments mean we have seen $25 billion since the federal election to rail, which will also complements that.

Regarding the Urban Policy Forum, the secretary of our department, who the member for Grayndler is very familiar with, will continue to chair the Urban Policy Forum. There have been no recent meetings, but meetings can be called to deal with emerging issues. The forum still exists.

The other point that was raised on this side, and I think it was from the member for Mallee, was in relation to the Black Spots Program. We announced this year's allocation yesterday. In fact, we announced a project in the member for Grayndler's electorate.

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