Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to use the Bruce Highway as the centre of my argument but talk in relation to the whole of the country. Our Treasurer, JB Hockey, was in Townsville, and we were talking about Townsville as the hub of the development of northern Australia. We were talking about why it is good for Townsville—good for our port, our airport, our north-west minerals province and our relationship with Papua New Guinea—and he said, 'That's all well and good, but when you're talking about the development of northern Australia, when you're talking about the importance of this region, please remember it is not what is good for Townsville, Northern Queensland or even northern Australia; we should be developing this because it is good for Australia.'

Improving the Bruce Highway is indeed good for Australia. If you are talking further about the development of northern Australia, you must look first and foremost at the west and north-west of Queensland. If we are going to do agriculture and improve our food bowl statistics and our role in providing food for the emerging Asian nations, the most important thing of course is water, then soil, then crops and then ports and access to markets. What we must do in relation to developing northern Australia is overlay these things. We must look at everything across the north of Australia—water, crops, soil, cattle, ports, access—and overlay the lot. That way you will narrow it down to what is important in the development of northern Australia. We must get our stuff to market, and having a safe, reliable Bruce Highway is very important to that.

The last time I drove the Bruce Highway was a couple of years ago now. I drove from Townsville down to Brisbane. I have done the trip a number of times—I am an auctioneer by trade and that was part of my territory. When you are doing it for work, you just do not notice it, because you are on the road and you are pushing through. When you are driving on the Bruce Highway as the member for Herbert, what you notice is the difference in the standard of roads. Clearly the worst stretch of road on the Bruce Highway, when I drove it last, was the stretch between Rockhampton and Miriam Vale. But North Queensland has the worst bridges in Australia. If you had a bridge in Sydney, Melbourne or on the Pacific coast somewhere that was routinely closed every night for seven days of every month for repairs and maintenance, it simply would not stack up. But that is what happens with the Silver Link Bridge in Ayr. The Haughton River bridge is probably the ugliest bridge in Australia. There is about a fag paper between you and the edge of the bridge every time you go across. People travel between Ayr and Townsville every day. When you come across, there is always a truck going the other way and you hold your breath as you go across. When you get down to the Sunshine Coast, it is three or four lanes wide with a nice big apron on the side of it.

You think to yourself that everyone says you cannot flood-proof the Bruce Highway. But my recollection is that the sea level on the Sunshine Coast is the same as the sea level in northern Queensland, so why can we not have roads that do not flood? As soon as there is a tropical low in the Coral Sea, businesses and food producers automatically start to jack up their prices because they know that their trucks are going to be parked on the side of the road for a number of days until the water goes down.

When we were talking with the state government about the roads in the 21st century and trying to repair the Bruce Highway, they were talking about the way that they had to look at safety first. I said when it comes to North Queensland you also have to go into flood-proofing and flood immunisation because it is pointless building more overtaking lanes if all it means is you are going to get to the flooded part of the road even quicker. We have to do these things at the same time. When it comes to building the roads of the north and looking after the Bruce Highway, we must ensure that we are developing a road that can stay open all the time. It is an honourable goal and something we should be pushing towards.

Whether it is a 50-50 split or an 80-20 split, whether roads are underway or whatever is being done, people in North Queensland do not care who is making the promise. All the people of Queensland care about is that it is getting done. They do not care whether it is being done by the state government; they do not care whether it is being done by Thiess; they do not care whether it is being done by John Holland; they do not care whether it is being done by Richard McDonald; they just want the road built.

The cost of manufacturing a road, the cost of production of road is getting higher and higher. We must look at driving our dollar further. What we must do all the way through is try and look at how we roll out tenders and the way that the tender process is done. Too often we find that the tender process is onerous for the smaller contractor. When organisations or government departments put through tender processes, the tender document is a couple of thousand pages long. The organisations or government departments turn the thing over and upside down, open it up and there is a figure there of $1.4 billion and another figure of $1.3 billion, so $1.3 billion gets the tender. At the end of a project they ask: did you have your trainees there? Did you have all of these things? And the contractors say no, not really. What are you going to do? You are not going to rip up the road. These guys continually go along like that. What we must do is make sure that the tender process is open to everyone to have a chop at it.

I see the member for Grayndler sitting opposite me and you will not find too many people who can argue about roads better than the member for Grayndler. No doubt you will quote me again because I did say in 2010 that the Labor government spent more than the Howard government on roads. What I have also said is that the Howard government spent more than the Hawke-Keating government. The Hawke-Keating government probably spent more than the Fraser government. The Fraser government could not have spent more than the Whitlam government—no-one spent more than the Whitlam government. We will spend more than the Labor government on the roads.

What we will do is try and make sure that we get better value for dollar. The member for Grayndler will obviously agree with me that the cost of a kilometre of road is getting astronomically expensive. What we do have to watch out for is that we are not just pulling projects away. The biggest disappointment in my time was after Cyclone Yasi and the floods of the south-east corner. The then Labor minister for transport allowed the funding for the Vantassel Street upgrade to be pulled in 2011. All of that money was shifted down to the south-east corner to help with the flood reconstruction. That was the thing that upset most North Queenslanders. It was an absolute crime because Vantassel Street is a flood prone road, so we shifted flood funding in North Queensland to go and help in south-east Queensland. It is getting done now. Ring Road stage 4 is getting done.

The greatest thing that will happen in this term and next term if we are re-elected is the Haughton River bridge. This term we will be going through site works and getting the road works done to realign the highway. When you come along the Haughton from Ayr, it is a big sweeping left-hand turn and across the most narrow of bridges. Twice during the last three years, that bridge has been a fag paper away from being shut down because it has been scoured so badly. It is a terrible bridge. It is a big, strong river, and we have to watch out with what we are doing there. We will be fixing that bridge and we will be replacing that bridge.

We have to address the costs again. We have to address the costs of road manufacture. We have to address the costs of why we are doing these things. We also have to deal with people's perception of what roads are. Some of us in this place were brought up in the country. When I was brought up—and I was brought up in a small country town; I was born in Quilpie and raised in Texas—you used to be able to just look forward on the highway and you would know when you were coming up to a stretch of bitumen because you were driving along the roads. Our perception these days is that we do not drive anywhere that is a dirt road. We go down the occasional footpath or the occasional driveway at people's places, but that is the only time we see a dirt road. So our expectations are a lot higher now, but that does not mean it is wrong.

North Queensland have about 0.8 per cent of the population of Australia, but we produce nearly two per cent of the country's GDP. If we are to develop the north of the country, if we are to get our goods to market, if we are to become the powerhouse that we fully expect, we must have the roads of the 21st century to push it through. I am pleased that we are in a position now where we are in an 80-20 split where the federal government will pony up the money, will make sure that the roads are built and will push forward with common sense. I know that the member for Dawson will also back me up here that the roadwork between Townsville and Mackay is integral to everything.

See this speech in context