Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to take this opportunity to speak about the work underway to upgrade the M1-Gateway merge. It's good to see my good colleague the member for Bonner here with me as I'm speaking about this, because he's been very involved in this project as well. I'm pleased to say the works, which have commenced in the past month or six weeks are progressing well. It's important for the community to see that the work is actually underway, because for the communities in Forde, and I know the communities in Bonner and others, along the M1 corridor this work can't come quickly enough. Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to inspect one of the construction areas at the Gateway-M1 merge. It's heartening to see the construction workers and bulldozers getting on with the job.

Equally, this is just the start of a much bigger project. We see that an estimated 150,000 cars use the M1 each day to travel through my electorate and access the growing regions of the northern part of the Gold Coast, in particular. This major roadway provides direct access to major arterial networks, international airports, freight rail and the Port of Brisbane, so it's a key lifeline for the south-east of Queensland. My community is one of the fastest growing regions in the country, and the federal government's commitment to this project is a priority to meet the demands of these motorists, residents and, importantly, the many businesses in our communities. The last thing we want to see tradespeople do is sit in traffic jams.

The coalition government has invested more than a billion dollars into this project, which in its first stage—which we're seeing done now—includes an upgrade to five southbound lanes from Eight Mile Plains to Rochedale South, the relocation of the existing bus entry from Eight Mile Plains onto the Pacific Motorway, the replacement of the Underwood Road bridge with a new four-lane overpass and the introduction of managed motorways technologies from Klumpp Road to Rochedale Road.

In addition, the project includes funding for the southern end of the Gold Coast, for the member for McPherson's electorate, through Robina down to Tugun. That will improve the quality of the road down there to a major highway standard, as we see now north of Robina through to Nerang. The other part of the funding is the remainder of the project from Rochedale South, or Springwood, to Loganlea Road, both northbound and southbound. That's a much bigger project— (Time expired)

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