Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's legitimate to ask hard questions. But it's also important to be honest about why we are where we are, and these are the facts. And I will take that interjection. These are the facts. The facts speak for themselves in this.

The other issue I want to raise today is one that has been frustrating the people of Maitland for years now: the Maitland flyover. Back in 2016, when the coalition was in government, my community was crying out for a solution to the gridlock in central Maitland. The traffic congestion was choking the town and making life harder for locals and businesses alike. What did we get? In true Liberal style, we got a job half done. They delivered an eastbound flyover but failed to build, let alone plan, for the westbound one. Anyone who drives through Maitland knows that the problem was always a two-way problem. They ignored it. They took the cheap option, and now we're paying the price. Today, we see the ramifications of that shortsightedness.

Maitland is one of the fastest-growing areas in New South Wales. There are thousands of new homes, families and businesses. It's an incredible place to raise a family. But we have one incomplete piece of critical infrastructure that should have been finished years ago. If the former government had shown any foresight, they would have done the job properly. Everyone knows it. All the locals know it. Everyone who's in town knows it. And the people who've just arrived are soon being educated about it. The coalition should have built both flyovers, east and west, together, but instead they left it to the next government, to our government, to clean up the mess.

So here we are again, getting on with the job, fixing another of their blunders and making sure the community finally gets the infrastructure it deserves. My constituents don't necessarily actually care which political party gets the credit; they just want the job done safely, efficiently and with respect for their growing community. I learned something off the great Milton Morris. He once said to me, 'Meryl, if you don't care about who gets the credit, you can get a lot achieved.' We don't care about credit. We just want things done—planned and efficiently executed. That's exactly what this Albanese Labor government is doing. We're planning for the long-term, we're funding projects properly, transparently and in partnership with local and state government, and we're not chasing headlines. We're delivering results.

What ties these two issues together—Tomago aluminium and the Maitland flyover—is a pattern of neglect and a failure to plan. When those opposite were in government, they were too busy fighting each other to fight for communities like mine. That is the great disappointment in all of this. They failed to plan, they failed to deliver and now Australians and my community, in particular, are living with the consequences. Whether it's energy policy, infrastructure, housing or health, the story is the same—a lost decade of inaction, a decade where they were so busy fighting each other with their climate wars that, sadly, seem to be continuing and so down in the weeds with ideology that they weren't getting on with the practical part of governing a nation. You need to make decisions. You need to plan. You need to be effective. You need to have foresight and strategy, and you need to methodically execute that strategy. You need to deliver.

That is what is happening under our government. We are different. We want to do things thoroughly, well and steadily. In our prime minister, we have a man that has a steady hand on the tiller. He is someone who has a strategy and is executing it. That is so important. We don't need more chaos and division. We don't need more mixed signalling to the international investment community about whether to invest in Australia or not. We are a reliable partner. We will continue to deliver for the Australian community. We are rebuilding local infrastructure, not just announcing it. We are supporting regional communities, and we're going continue to deliver for those communities.

Debate adjourned

Sitting suspended from 13:36 to 15:59

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