Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Can I firstly underline a couple of the comments from the member for Eden-Monaro, in particular those in relation to the exercise that will take place in November to bring councils a lot closer to the source of the capacity to deal effectively with the issues that confront them in roads. Also, before the member for Eden-Monaro leaves, I would like to congratulate him on the deal that secures a water supply for Queanbeyan into the future. Most members know that whilst I am here I have digs in the member’s electorate at Queanbeyan, and I recommend it highly to other members of parliament. It is a great place to live while you are down in Canberra at parliament.

The AusLink (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2008 seeks to do a limited number of things, but importantly it continues Roads to Recovery to 2014. I do not want to bore the chamber with the tedious repetition that I am sure will come forward with members talking about that. I will simply say that, whilst this is universally popular with councils throughout the country, it is popular particularly with the council in my area, the Moreton Bay Regional Council. The fact that $1.75 billion will be directed to councils over five years is something for us to be particularly pleased about.

The heavy vehicle safety and productivity program is also allowed for in this bill, and what this does is allow for a number of things including rest areas, which are very important in the road transport industry, to be built as part of the AusLink program. But we should be very clear that this is contingent on the enabling legislation for the 2007 Heavy Vehicles Charges Determination getting passage through the Senate, where the coalition is currently blocking it. In June of last year the then federal Minister for Transport and Regional Services and Leader of the Nationals, Mr Vaile, said:

The National Transport Commission will develop a new heavy vehicle charges determination to be implemented from 1 July 2008.

That was happening under the former government. It was their intention to implement those charges from July 2008. This is currently what they are blocking in the Senate. Mr Vaile went on to say:

The new determination will aim to recover the heavy vehicles’ allocated infrastructure costs in total and will also aim to remove cross-subsidisation across heavy vehicle classes.

So the former government, including the former minister and former Leader of the Nationals in this place, signalled a good 12 months out from when this was going to take effect what was going to happen. When the current shadow minister for transport—the current Leader of the National Party in this place, Mr Truss—made his contribution earlier in this debate, he indicated that this amounted to blackmail. It is blackmail when we do it and it is good policy when they do it—that seems to be the argument that they were making.

The member for Wide Bay went on to say in his contribution:

The coalition has always believed that the heavy vehicle sector should pay its way but we do not support the reintroduction of the indexation of fuel excise.

I am really happy to play any silly game that the member for Wide Bay wants to play. He is suggesting that the heavy vehicle sector should pay its way; I want to know what his plan is. Currently, the coalition do not seem to have one. They have no idea but they have the capacity, they have the power, to misuse the Senate again, for another three years, to block budget measures and, in particular, to block measures that they were anticipating introducing and to block measures that will seriously limit safety on the roads in this country. This is hypocrisy on a grand scale, the grandest scale ever.

It is the same as we saw with the horse flu levy legislation. That was a proposal made in December 2006, while the former government was in power, which they accepted. They understood in that case that they could not make those changes by regulation and that they had to bring in a principal act. They were drafting it. It was drafted or substantially drafted when the government changed. They undertook the equine influenza response as if it was already in place. We were able to introduce that legislation in February. That either makes us the most efficient government the world has ever seen, having been elected only at the end of November, or we thought the idea they had about equine influenza was a good one, so we brought in their legislation. And what are they doing? They are opposing it in the Senate. They are going to block the equine influenza legislation in the Senate. The people of Australia deserve to know and deserve to be told clearly what a hypocritical, opportunistic mob this opposition is. It does not matter who leads them; they are just the same.

The member for Hinkler in his contribution called this provision—that is, the provision that these safety measures needed to be funded out of the measures that have been blocked in the Senate—childish retribution. It was not childish retribution when they were doing it. It was good government. So now it is blackmail and childish retribution. They ought to stand condemned for the way they behave in this place. Let me talk to the member for Hinkler about what might be retribution.

The coalition in the Senate is currently blocking or was threatening to block—although I believe we have had a small measure of success there overnight—something like $6 billion worth of revenue measures. At the same time the Leader of the House, Mr Albanese, indicated that members of the opposition had written to him pleading for $6 billion worth of infrastructure programs to be undertaken in their electorates. Retribution—and, I believe, legitimate retribution—could be taken here. If those revenue measures are blocked, those infrastructure projects in the opposition electorates ought to be blocked so that the people in their electorates can look them in the eye and say, ‘Your actions in blocking government money have led to the loss of infrastructure in our electorates.’ I believe that that would be a great way for us to move. Unfortunately, I am in a minority there, and government policy will not allow that sort of retribution against what I believe are outrageous actions by the coalition.

The coalition are unwilling to take responsibility for their own actions. It is disingenuous of them and, while opposition speakers universally have taken this stand, there has been greater emphasis from the National Party—who take credit for Roads to Recovery every time they get an opportunity—in welcoming the retention of the Roads to Recovery program. And then they call us blackmailers because we adopt their former government’s heavy vehicle charges determination. We hung on to something that they were responsible for introducing—and it is a great program; nobody has any argument about Roads to Recovery. I think everybody supports it outrageously. But to say that is a good thing and then to say that to hold onto another piece of coalition policy is a bad thing is somewhat awry in my view.

Longman, my electorate, is bisected by Queensland’s north-south transport corridor. The Bruce Highway runs through the middle of my electorate and, as with most major roads in Queensland, the railway line runs parallel to the Bruce Highway. The north coast rail line is in fact one of the busiest freight lines in Australia and it is also heavily used for commuter traffic, with people travelling to and from work in Brisbane. I think that most people now understand that Caboolture, the northernmost part of the seat of Longman, occupies a situation relative to Brisbane akin to that which Penrith occupies relative to Sydney. We are a rapidly growing area. At a breakfast the other week, the Mayor of Moreton Bay Regional Council indicated that we will have an additional 155,000 people in our area by, I think, 2020. That is quite frightening growth.

What have they got in Sydney? They have got the railway line, of course, and they have got the Great Western Highway, which I used to trundle up and down a bit as a teenager when I lived in Sydney, but they now also have the M4 running parallel to the Great Western Highway in many parts. The road network in Sydney has developed in much the same way that it is going to need to develop in Longman.

AusLink funding is currently being used to upgrade the Bruce Highway. It has reached the Uhlmann Road interchange at Burpengary and is now well underway between the Uhlmann Road interchange and the Bribie Island Road interchange. I am happy to say that I was able to inspect the progress on that work with the state MP Carolyn Male, and I want to thank Leighton Contractors for giving us that opportunity. Progress on the works is more than satisfactory, and there is no doubt in my mind that it will be completed within the project time frame.

We have also committed, through the last election, to using around $120 million of AusLink 2 funding for much needed overpasses across the Bruce Highway as it bisects the electorate, including at Boundary Road, where it is being brought on by major residential development; at Bribie Island Road, which is probably one of the worst-constructed highway interchanges in the country in that it is about 20 metres from the bank of the river, as the old road network there follows the stock routes from the 1800s; at Pumicestone Road, where there is a low clearance overpass; and just north of my electorate, in the electorate of Fisher, at Johnston Road.

We have also received a deal of black spot funding in my electorate, particularly for Pumicestone Road at Caboolture, Old Bay Road, Moore Road, Lindsay Road, Burpengary Road and New Settlement Road. Not that long ago, these roads were simply small rural connector roads. Because of the growth in population that has come into the area, they have now become major urban roads and carry a great deal of traffic.

One of the things that have been dragging the chain as the Bruce Highway has been developed, in my view, is sound attenuation for the people who live there. As I mentioned, having a rapidly growing urban area with a major highway bisecting it means that there are a lot of homes very close to the highway. In many cases people are suffering, as the traffic volume grows on the road, quite intolerable noise levels. I want to particularly mention here today the Kallangur noise action group and their long battle with both the actual level of noise and the Queensland Department of Main Roads to try to get their noise problem fixed. My understanding is that that is very close to occurring. The money for that will come from AusLink. It seems that the line that is drawn, as determined by the decibels, will mean that noise attenuation can be improved in that area.

Recently we had a visit from the South-East Queensland Council of Mayors, and it was good to see so many mayors from what is the largest population area of Queensland and from a group of councils who share many similar problems coming together as one to talk to us and to the ministers about infrastructure needs in our area. In particular I mention that they showed some concern about the north coast rail link, including a link to the Sunshine Coast; a multimodal transport corridor between Petrie and Redcliffe, which continues the decades-old rail to Redcliffe campaign; and a new road link to the Sunshine Coast to supplement the Bruce Highway. I will say a couple of things about those as I conclude. The state government has been doing a fair bit of work on the north coast rail link in recent years, but it appears to have run out of money. I trust that that is a genuine running out of money and not a ploy by the state government, thinking that if they stop funding now then they may be able to get money from the federal government to continue that job. Let us hope that the north coast rail link can continue to be upgraded, particularly with electric commuter trains into the Sunshine Coast.

The multimodal corridor from Petrie to Redcliffe is something that I have long been on the record as a supporter of, but I understand that there are a number of problems with doing it. Amongst those, in particular, is that it is kind of pointless for us as a federal government to support or promote the building of that corridor, or even to fund it, if the state government are not going to be able to run trains on it, and they have some great difficulties. There are serious deficiencies in the central rail capacity in accepting additional services from the growth areas and no prospect of being able to use double-decker carriages, as is done in some other cities to reduce the number of services or to increase capacity, because they simply do not fit through the tunnels that we have. Brisbane is a city that was developed post war, when motor cars became accessible to people, so rail transport became secondary. The capacity for the state to rebuild their inner city infrastructure is probably quite limited.

I have quite a few other things that I am not going to have time to talk about today, so I shall go to one particular matter. That is the matter of the timber bridges that exist on the road network in eastern Australia. I had the pleasure quite recently of visiting Kennedy’s Classic Aged Timbers, which is a facility in my electorate that was given a substantial amount of money through the Regional Partnerships program to move to that site and to establish what they have there. They have done very well. I hasten to add that the company has also received some funding support from the state government.

When I talked to Michael Kennedy, he indicated to me that he believed there are some 30,000 wooden bridges on the east coast of Australia that will be slated for demolition in the next 15 to 20 years. There is no absolute requirement for those timbers to be recycled—which Michael does very well, so he has a professional interest in it—but it is something that we should be looking at doing. It is a lot cheaper for people who demolish bridges to adopt the old ‘crunch, munch and dump’ philosophy than it is for them to take them apart in such a way that the timbers can be recycled. May I say that while our opposition colleagues do not actually support the Tree of Knowledge heritage facility going in at Barcaldine—

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