Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

The Labor opposition welcomes any new investment in the biotechnology and medical tech sectors, and in the Hunter we are proudly home to the Hunter Medical Research Institute, which does fantastic work every day. I am pleased to speak on this motion, but it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that this motion acts to distract from the fact that the 2021-22 budget has failed to address critical infrastructure needs in regions like mine. In my electorate of Paterson, we're still waiting on the M1 Pacific Motorway extension to Raymond Terrace. I've been championing the need for this vital piece of infrastructure since I was elected in 2016, and as a resident of the Hunter I'd known about this problem for 10 years prior to that as well.

I want to talk to those opposite. I want to take them through the time line of the Liberal lip-service when it comes to this critical piece of infrastructure. Back in 2015 the New South Wales coalition promised to fund the planning for this project. It was a bloke called Duncan Gay. He was the freight and roads minister for the New South Wales government at the time, and he announced $200 million to complete the planning. Fast forward to 2018, when the federal Liberals promised the project yet again, claiming that this was a critical need for our region and an absolute priority. But did we see any more money for the planning or any actual getting on with the project? No, we did not. Did we see any environmental impact study or expression of interest for tender? Not a single thing. We waited, and the coffers sat empty. In April 2019 Anthony Albanese, then Labor's shadow minister for infrastructure, and I spoke out, and we said how vital this project was again. Albo committed $1.5 billion to get this project going under a Labor government.

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