Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Despite proclaiming that the last Victorian state election was 'a referendum on the East West Link', the Liberal Party continues to flog this deadest of dead horses. The assistant minister for infrastructure, when he is not getting sandwiches for the member for Wide Bay, has been tweeting recently, 'Build the link.' The member for Deakin has launched an advertising campaign in which he says, 'Just build it.' You can imagine them running around Victoria like Lyle Lanley from The Simpsons episode 'Marge vs. the Monorail' saying, 'Just don't think; build the link. Just don't think; build the link.'

They do not want you to think about the fact that Infrastructure Australia has said the Melbourne Metro rail tunnel is a bigger priority. They do not want you to think about the fact that even on the government's own business case they found that the taxpayer would lose 55c for every dollar spent on this project. And, especially, they do not want you to think about the fact that the Victorian Labor government, led by Premier Daniel Andrews, promised at the last election that they would not build this link. They do not want you to think about anything like that. They are saying, 'Go and build this project that loses more than 50c in the dollar.' This just shows the narrow mindset of this government.

We have a fantastic Melbourne Metro Rail Project that needs to be done—a project that, I might add, echoes the Melbourne City Loop project built by that known socialist Dick Hamer. It is a project that we need to increase the capacity of public transport in Victoria. So I say to the Prime Minister: change your outdated attitude in refusing to support public transport in Australia; get off your hobbyhorse about the East West Link and get into the 21st century.