Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

The budget will include over 760 initiatives for regional Australia. In my own portfolio it will include the Bass, Tasman and Tamar highways in Tasmania; freight roads in Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory; Mandalong Road and the Muswellbrook bypass in the Hunter; jetties up in the Torres Strait; logistics and industrial hubs in Gippsland, in Townsville—I see the member interjecting—and in the Northern Territory; and cultural and sporting precincts in Alice and in Kalgoorlie. It will include two new regional programs: the Growing Regions Program and the partnerships and precincts program—a billion dollars to be invested over the next three years into regional communities across this country.

The budget, of course, ends the decade of waste and rorts and cleans up the mess that has been left by the Liberal and National parties. It fixes the legacy of infrastructure projects that the previous government announced, with great fanfare, but was actually unable to deliver. It ends the mess of grants programs that saw rampant politicisation and deserving communities across this country miss out.

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