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

I am proud to support the motion by the member for Griffith, a strong female Queenslander following in the tradition of Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Deputy Premier Jackie Trad, who are doing their bit for Queensland. It is nice to have women from Queensland who actually understand what jobs mean. The Queensland Labor government are a team prepared to stand up for Queensland, not bury their heads in the sand like we have heard from those opposite; the Prime Minister, from New South Wales; and the Deputy Prime Minister, who deserted Queensland for New South Wales. The one-time Queenslander has gone missing in Queensland. He seems to be only concerned with ruining the APVMA with a strong flavour of pork. The one-time public-transport aficionado, Prime Minister Turnbull, is taking Queensland for granted, as we heard in the member for Griffith's motion. He is a bloke who is happy to annually catch his favourite 389 bus route in Sydney but will do nothing for Queenslanders who use public transport every single day.

The existing inner-city rail crossing over the Brisbane River, the Merivale Bridge, is at full capacity. We all know that. Prime Minister Turnbull knows it too, but he continues to ignore this fact. The four stations that are linked to it that are common across the entire train network—the Roma Street, Central, Fortitude Valley and Bowen Hills stations—are causing bottlenecks and scheduling nightmares.

The Cross River Rail was declared ready to go by the independent experts at Infrastructure Australia in 2012. It was the No. 1 project. The former Labor federal government allocated funding for Cross River Rail in our 2013 budget. It was supported by the then Minister for Transport and Main Roads, Scott Emerson, who was ready to go and stand alongside our Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Anthony Albanese, at a press conference at Kangaroo Point, until it was cancelled by Campbell Newman. We still have the letter that Scott Emerson wrote.

Thankfully for Queenslanders, we now have a state Labor government who allocated in their budget $2.8 billion over the forward estimates to get Cross River Rail moving. In Queensland, our Labor government are committed to fully funding Cross River Rail to ensure that this critical project is built to drive growth across our whole economy. This commitment to advance Queensland includes an additional $2.6 billion over future budgets to complete the project.

The Turnbull government have had four years to stand up for Queensland. They are about to enter their fifth year of government. Frankly, Queenslanders are sick of the federal Liberal and National Party government failing our state. That is why Annastacia Palaszczuk and her team went it alone.

What do southsiders, particularly those who live in Moreton, have to look forward to? It will alleviate the bottleneck at Merivale Bridge and the four inner-city stations from Roma Street to Bowen Hills, and it will deliver an additional 19,000 public transport seats during peak hours. Of these extra seats, 11,800 will help travellers in Moreton. That is 8,600 seats for those who travel from the southside down to Beenleigh—through the member for Forde's electorate on the Gold Coast and Beenleigh lines—and 3,200 for those who travel from the west on the Ipswich and Springfield lines. Thanks to Cross River Rail, customers travelling on the Beenleigh and Gold Coast lines to the CBD will save, on average, 15 minutes in their commutes, and the Ipswich line people will save an average of four minutes every journey.

With these additional services and capacities benefiting people in the electorates of Forde, Rankin and Moreton, travellers from all the way down to the Gold Coast and Beenleigh lines will see an average of one train every 10 minutes, and commuters from the west on the Ipswich line will see one train every six minutes during peak times. Every single day, locals will reap the benefits of Queensland Labor investing in this project.

It also means that the public transport network will take 18,500 cars off main roads. That will help the Ipswich Motorway, Ipswich Road in my electorate, Beaudesert Road and the Pacific Motorway as well. And there will be jobs—we are the Labor Party; we believe in jobs—with 1,500 new jobs each and every year for Queenslanders. This is nation-building infrastructure that Infrastructure Australia recognised and the Palaszczuk government recognised. This will be a boost to the tune of $70 billion to the Queensland economy at a time when we need it most.

Sadly, the Liberal and National parties do not have the vision. They have all the vision of a caravan site when it comes to infrastructure, doing the right thing by our economy and investing in productivity. So I am proud to be a member of the Labor Party, a party that will always fight for Queensland, a party that works every day to advance Queensland. The Labor Party started in Queensland, and we will always do our best to protect our state. I commend this motion from the member for Griffith, and I look forward to joining southside locals on their faster, easier and more reliable public transport on our public transport network.

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