Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Chisholm for her question and for the incredible work that she does for her community, indeed right across Australia, particularly in relation to the coronavirus in recent weeks. The work that she has been doing has been truly remarkable.

Last year the Prime Minister formally approached the states and territories and asked them if they had infrastructure projects that they could bring forward in order to get construction and more jobs going more quickly. As a result of that, late last year we announced $4.2 billion worth of either new money or money which we could bring into the forward estimates that otherwise was not. That has enabled significant projects to get going now which otherwise would not have been underway. For example, next week we'll be formally starting the construction of stage 2 of the Monash Freeway Upgrade. I note that the member for La Trobe is particularly interested in this. This is a $1.3 billion project which will support 1,000 jobs. This will begin next week. It's only able to begin because of the decision which we made late last year to add a further $184 million to that project, which enables the construction to get going and those thousand jobs to kick off and get going immediately.

Similarly with the massive North East Link project in Melbourne, a $16 billion project which I know the member for Chisholm and the member for Menzies are interested in.

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