Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

There is no coup underway, I can assure you. Now, as the member obviously knows, investing in infrastructure is absolutely critical for New South Wales and indeed for our country if we are to have a prosperous nation with an economically bright future. Before question time we had New South Wales Labor members jumping up, frothing at the mouth and criticising the coalition. But they stood quietly by for 16 years while the New South Wales Labor government underinvested in infrastructure. They stood quietly by when the Carr, Iemma, Rees and Keneally governments allowed infrastructure development in New South Wales to stall. By contrast, our decision to work with the Baird and Grant governments and the rest of the New South Wales coalition has meant a revitalisation of infrastructure investment in that state.

You have all heard of our $50 billion plan to upgrade infrastructure across the nation. Almost $15 billion of that money is being provided for New South Wales. Already there are significant projects underway—for instance, $3.6 billion for the Western Sydney Infrastructure Plan, which will upgrade major roads. And already we have started to generate some of the 8,000 jobs that will be created as part of that project. The member for Grayndler never proposed any road infrastructure upgrades for Western Sydney until last week—he must have met a photocopier along the way somewhere or other—and he went out with the New South Wales Labor leader to announce that Labor was going to build the road that we had already started. If he had looked around while he was out there he would have realised that his announcement had been trumped.

Mr Morrison interjecting—

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