Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to stress the importance of good governments investing in infrastructure that advances Australia's competitiveness and creates jobs for the future. The Bruce Highway takes its name from Stanley Bruce, one of the only two prime ministers in Australia's history who have lost their seats at a federal election. The other one, of course, is John Howard. The Bruce Highway does not run through my electorate, but it is obviously used by my constituents, and the community is well aware of the importance of delivering a safe, reliable and efficient highway—particularly one of my businesses, the Brisbane Markets, which distributes all the fresh fruit and vegies throughout Queensland; in fact, throughout Australia. It relies significantly on the Bruce Highway in bringing in produce that it can sell. Also, being married to a Cairns girl, I know the Bruce Highway very well, and I have friends in Townsville as well. In my time as a union organiser from 2000 through to 2004, I covered an area from Brisbane basically up to Rockhampton and Moranbah, so I spent a lot of time—too much time, in fact—on the Bruce Highway.

So I was horrified to see recently that it had been ranked as the world's 22nd most dangerous highway, and the fatalities are something that we on both sides of the chamber agree should be eliminated wherever possible. Obviously, those deaths are an economic cost and a horrible tragedy for families. This 1,700-kilometre-long highway represents less than eight per cent of our national highways but, sadly, accounts for almost a fifth of Australia's death toll, something that we should be doing all we can to change. Obviously upgrades are the way to do it. Anyone who has driven that highway knows—and I have seen this many times myself—that, if you are stuck going up or down the highway behind a couple of caravans or a couple of campervans of British tourists, or tourists from around the world, it can create problems. Overtaking lanes are obviously important. As people get frustrated—they may have goods to deliver—they make rash decisions.

Any time that that road is cut, due to floods or accidents, it damages the economic potential of the area. Sadly, the coalition has undelivered on its commitment to fund the upgrade of the Bruce Highway. I think we should change its name to the Never-Never Highway, because during the time of the Howard government, nearly 12 years, they spent only $1.3 billion on the Bruce Highway, even at a time when the transport minister had the highway going right through his backyard. That was a tragedy.

What did the Labor Party do? We committed nearly $6 billion over six years in government—most of it spent, some of it being spent now, with people putting shovels in the ground for Labor funded projects, as we have heard from the earlier speeches. Let us compare: the Howard government, $1 billion over 12 years, and the Labor government, $6 billion over six years. The pathetic response we have got from the state LNP government and the federal LNP government now is $6 billion over 10 years. I was an English teacher, but even I can do the maths there. It just does not add up. It is a typical example of those opposite supporting it in principle—but obviously infrastructure is all about putting a shovel into the ground and achieving a real result.

We have a self-declared 'infrastructure Prime Minister'—self-declared because he has not actually done anything except white-ant the NBN. We might as well call him the breakdancing Prime Minister. He does not do any breakdancing either. It has as much relevance as calling him the infrastructure Prime Minister. We have seen it time and time again. I had a look back at the first speech of my predecessor as the member for Moreton, back in March or April 1996, where he talked about upgrading the Coopers Plains rail crossing in the electorate. He said it was something that was going to happen, but then for 12 years nothing happened. Nothing happened at all. I think this is what we will see with the Bruce Highway—fine, noble sounding words but no dollars; fine sentiments but no people actually put on the ground to boost the infrastructure.

With a highway that creates so many deaths and that is such a route for tourists, for people going to work in the coalfields, for people holidaying, for people bringing fruit and vegetables down to the markets of Queensland and south-east Australia, we need to do all that we can to flood-proof it, all that we can to make sure that it is safe and all that we can to make sure that there are no more fatalities.

Debate adjourned.

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