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

I'm going to tell you! Last week, we officially opened the Parkes Bypass in New South Wales. This project takes the thousands of trucks that travel from Melbourne to Brisbane on the Newell Highway out of the centre of town, a project the Parkes community have been calling for for over 60 years, delivered by the Albanese and Minns governments. In June, I joined the Prime Minister and Minister Collins alongside the Tasmanian government to officially open the new Bridgewater Bridge, a major crossing of the Derwent that connects Hobart to the north. Then, in October, we got one step closer to completing Perth's METRONET project when we opened the Byford extension, and just Midland's is left to go. Of course, we have had to find hundreds of millions of dollars extra to actually deliver those projects, because they were short-changed by those opposite.

There is a lot of fantastic projects under way across the country. We've got the Torrens to Darlington project in South Australia, where we'll complete the north-south road link through Adelaide, reducing the time people spend at traffic lights—and the TBMs are being erected on site as we speak. We've got the Northern Territory, where we're about to start upgrading the Victoria and Barkly highways. We are investing an additional $7.2 billion in the Bruce Highway to upgrade that—the major artery that connects both ends of Queensland. We are spending a total of $17 billion on that corridor, and construction has started with that new $7.2 billion.

Councils are upgrading regional roads across the country, thanks to the doubling of Roads to Recovery funding that's happened under this government. In my home state of Victoria, the Victorian government was never really meant to go it alone when it came to the Melbourne Metro Tunnel project. When the Prime Minister held this portfolio, we committed $3 billion to the Metro Tunnel but, under Tony Abbott, this divisive and divided Liberal Party cut that $3 billion out of Victoria. We see now that this project will be opening on Sunday, and I commend the Victorian government for completing it and going it alone. But we know, as a government, we are focused on delivery and not just division. This federal government is back in the rail game, well and truly, investing in the projects that all Australians need.

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