Wednesday, 5 February 2025

 Harriet SHING (Eastern Victoria – Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop, Minister for Housing and Building, Minister for Development Victoria and Precincts) (12:26): I am so pleased to be in this place representing Australia’s largest housing project, the Suburban Rail Loop. The SRL, despite any concerns that those opposite might have, will actually unlock 70,000 new homes in the first stage. That will be built on the doorstep of world-class public transport with local jobs, services and open spaces nearby. We cannot let growth happen by accident. Failing to plan for growth means more-expensive homes further away from families and jobs. It means more traffic, more time commuting instead of being with your loved ones and less opportunity to live closer to where you grew up. We know this and the government in Canberra knows it, and that is why the Albanese Labor government has committed $2.2 billion in its budget so that we can have tunnel-boring machines in the ground next year building the communities that Victorians deserve.

Those opposite are actually trying to say that now is not the right time for the Suburban Rail Loop, or like Peter Dutton, they are claiming that a project years into its delivery is a hoax. When is the right time? Are you going to cancel the Suburban Rail Loop? Are you not going to proceed with nation-building infrastructure? Are you going to cancel the opportunity to have housing that goes somewhere other than Brighton, because I am sure that your friend, if indeed you might call him that, in the other place is going to be particularly interested to know it.

Anyone who has been to Box Hill in the last 18 months knows that this project is well underway. Major construction will start in coming months, and we will have tunnel-boring machines, as I said, in the ground later this year. We know and Victorians know that now is the right time to deliver the Suburban Rail Loop as a long-term project, because without it we will only move backwards. On this side of the house we have got a positive and united vision for our future, while you opposite stick your heads in the sand about the future that Victorians deserve. We are not blockers, we are builders. What they are going to get under us is more homes, better communities, better access to transport and more opportunities overall.