Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you. If I can come to the rest of these projects. The M4 to M5 extension was $1.8 billion. This one did not just get a re-announcement. This one was so important that it got a new name. This one got the real PR treatment. It got turned into WestConnex on 19 September. The F3 to M2 missing link, which is one that I really do want to pay a little bit of attention to, was $405 million. It was re-announced as if it were a new project on 15 March 2014. That piece of road matters to hundreds of thousands of people who move across the northern part of Sydney and from the Central Coast—a beautiful part of the country in which I get to reside and have lived for 30 years now. It is an amazing road that connects Sydney to the north, but the connection to the other major roads in Sydney has been a very big problem for those hundreds of thousands of people who get caught in that bottleneck. It was Labor that led with this project. It was Labor that negotiated with the state O'Farrell Liberal government to get a joint commitment and for $405 million to be committed by our federal government in that last parliament, under Julia Gillard. She announced it at Kariong, at the top of the hill as you enter into Gosford, with then Minister Albanese, to make sure that the people of the Central Coast, who have long suffered the bottleneck at the end of that freeway, have into the future a wonderful, modern piece of infrastructure that will improve the productivity of all of the businesses that use that connection but also improve the lives of all of those who work in Sydney whether by choice or by design and are seeking a good run home to get back to their families.

The re-announcements continued with the Hunter Expressway, $1.5 billion, and opened by Warren Truss on 21 March 2014. Labor delivered it. The F5 at Campbelltown was $93 million. Greater Western Highway was $300 million and re-announced by this lot on 10 July. And so it goes on and on and on. I really wanted to labour the point somewhat—