Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

You should come and talk to some of my farmers who have railway lines coming through their place, member for Grayndler, and ask them if they think it's going ahead. It's going ahead all right. This is real infrastructure that's being rolled out, not just talked about. There's the completion of the duplication of the Pacific Highway and the relationship with New South Wales. The federal government, from my memory, reneged on their share of the expenditure. It took a coalition government to bring it up to 80 per cent funding of the Pacific Highway. There was the announcement last week of the bypass around Coffs Harbour—real spending. It's not only on inland rail, which runs across my electorate, but some is on infrastructure that has a great effect on communities.

There is the $10 million that we're contributing to the Bourke abattoir—a small animals abattoir that will employ a couple of hundred local people in that western New South Wales town. There is the infrastructure spending going into the Dubbo airport at the moment—a large project in conjunction with the Dubbo council and the Flying Doctor Service to increase the capacity at that base, not only to service the people of western New South Wales through the Flying Doctor Service but also to help Dubbo grow as a regional hub for freight. So this government is getting on with proper spending and diligent management. It's not just talking about cash splashes and not actually getting the job done. There are practical things like the heavy vehicle bypass around Warialda that will get those large, high-mass vehicles out of the main street, stop a bottleneck that's dangerous and help productive farmers in the northern part of New South Wales and Queensland get to markets in a more efficient way, with cheaper freight and in safer measure.

I find it quite incredible that the member for Grayndler would bring about this matter of public importance—the member who oversaw five years of incompetence. He had a great amount of cash lent to him by the Howard government and he squandered it.

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