Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Albanese Labor government is building Australia's future. We have an infrastructure pipeline of $120 billion that is about making the journeys between cities and regional and rural communities safer, getting people home on time, improving productivity and making sure the lifestyle and livelihoods of people are improved. In addition to that, we've doubled the Roads to Recovery funding to $1 billion per year so that councils can get the funding they need to maintain local roads and make improvements. We reversed, of course, the coalition government's cuts in this space. Now we've put $200 million on the table available for the Safer Local Roads and Infrastructure Program each year, and we've increased the black spot funding to $150 million a year.

Locally, on 26 February, I was pleased to announce a major update on the Bremer River Bridge upgrade along the Warrego Highway in my electorate, along with the local state member for Ipswich West, Wendy Bourne. The Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads, TMR, finally confirmed it won't be going ahead with its original plan to redeck the Bremer River westbound bridge, which would have seen it closed for six months. Instead, TMR is undertaking rehabilitation and strengthening works to repair fatigue cracks in the steel girder welds under the bridge, which should be completed this year or early next year. That means less disruption for the 32,000 commuters and heavy vehicles that use the bridge every day. It means we can remove the current reduced speed limits that are in place and get traffic flowing again sooner. This has been the bane of people's lives.

This is a good outcome for our local community, but the reality is it should never have taken this long to get to this point; the works by TMR were supposed to have started late last year. It's all the more disappointing when you consider that the Albanese Labor government and the former Queensland Labor government, through myself and local state member, who was then the candidate for Ipswich West, Wendy Bourne, secured the joint funding to fix the Bremer River Bridge two years ago, back in mid 2024. With the change of government in Queensland later that year, the project stalled. The new LNP government and TMR failed to keep myself, the state member, the council and local residents informed about what was going on with the upgrade. Sadly, this has become all too common for most major transport projects in Ipswich over the last 18 months. It's been an experience of delays since the election of the Crisafulli LNP government.

So what are we doing? We simply cannot afford to fall behind like this, and we are trying to put as much pressure as we can on the LNP government in Queensland to recognise the fast-growing region of Ipswich and the western corridor. We've hit 270,000 people in Ipswich, and we're growing at the rate of 10,000 people each year. We're well on track to hit over 500,000 people by 2046. We are bursting at the seams, infrastructure is struggling to keep pace with the population growth and we're experiencing significant growing pains. As a very rough proxy, Infrastructure Australia has estimated the cost of congestion on Ipswich Motorway is to rise to $139,000,000 per annum by 2031. This is not some backwater. This is Ipswich, one of the major provincial cities in Queensland.

The Albanese government gets this, and we have stepped up to invest more than $400 million in road and transport infrastructure in Blair. I'm proud of the fact that in the last few years we've been able to secure funding for pretty much every major transport infrastructure in my electorate and surrounds: $200 million for the Amberley interchange, $138.5 million for the Mount Crosby Road interchange, $42.5 million for the Bremer River Bridge, another $20 million for the Brisbane Valley Highway, $12.5 million for planning for the next stage, the final stage, of the Ipswich Motorway, plus $3.4 million for Ipswich-Springfield rail line business case. I fought for years to lock in funding for these projects, and now I find myself in the invidious position where most of these projects are well behind schedule and probably years away from construction even starting, much less being completed, because of the failure of the LNP state government. The federal government is really responsible for assisting in providing funds in this space. We are very much beholden to the Queensland government and its TMR when it comes to project delivery, and we have little control over project timeframes.

Politics aside, I genuinely hope the Queensland government can understand the urgency of the task and the growth in the Ipswich corridor. At least based on public pronouncements, it seems that there is a bipartisan approach to meeting the needs of the region, but in practice it's not happening. Indeed, the Premier of Queensland, Premier Crisafulli, visited Ipswich in June last year, on the eve of the first budget, and acknowledged the need for an Ipswich infrastructure plan. Yet, a few days later, the Queensland budget had no such plan for Ipswich. There was no funding for big-ticket transport items, which was very disappointing and a political slap in the face for people living in Ipswich. There was no matching funding for the Albanese government's $200 million commitment to the Amberely interchange. There was only $4 million for a detailed business case for a second river crossing to duplicate the David Trumpy Bridge over the Bremer River. They failed to match, of course, the former state Labor government's $146 million commitment towards construction of such a bridge.

Their failure to back in the Amberley interchange, in particular, was very poor and disappointing after LNP candidates—indeed, some members at a state level—had campaigned on the slogan Just Fix It during state and federal election campaigns, with billboards all over the place and brochures being distributed. On top of this, there were no updates on projects that had already had joint funding allocated, like the Mount Crosby Road interchange, the Bremer River Bridge, the Ipswich Motorway or the Ipswich to Springfield rail line. These projects all now appear to be in the slow lane.

While we're now finally seeing some progress on the Bremer River Bridge repairs, the Mount Crosby interchange upgrade just up the road has been mishandled by TMR. The department had to complete additional ecological surveys under the federal government's Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act beyond what they claim they had initially anticipated. They knew about this in 2023, so it's disappointing that the construction is not expected to start until late 2026 and that it could be delayed even further. This is mishandling by the LNP government at a state level and its TMR department. Going forward, I hope they do not continue to hide behind these environmental approvals and use them as an excuse to delay the project further. Unfortunately, this project pre-dates the recent reforms to the EPBC Act aimed at fast-tracking project approvals. I can't help but feel that, if these projects were in other major centres like the Gold Coast or the Sunshine Coast, they would have been far progressed by now.

In a bizarre postscript to the Crisafulli government state budget, the Queensland Minister for Transport and Main Roads, Brent Mickelberg, claimed wrongly in a speech in September last year that the Crisafulli government had matched the $200 million federal commitment to the Amberley interchange and that the funding was in the budget. It clearly was not. It was an extraordinary gaffe. In addition, the minister admitted the Amberley interchange was 'dangerous', yet he refused to join the federal government and commit money to this much-needed project. When I announced the $200 million ahead of the federal election last year, it was expected the Queensland government would match the funding because the LNP candidate running against me also matched our commitment just days later, expecting his comrades and colleagues in the Queensland government to match it. After all, it also followed an announcement in September 2024 from our government and the former state Labor government of another $20 million in joint funding for business cases for upgrades to the Amberley interchange and the Ripley Road and Swanbank Road interchanges along the Cunningham Highway.

On top of this, in his speech, Minister Mickelberg further tried to claim that funding in the state budget for the Ipswich to Springfield rail link, or the public transport corridor, came from the Crisafulli government, when it was actually committed by the former state Labor government as well as the Albanese government. This was a 2022 election commitment of mine, with the Albanese Labor government and the former state Labor government both committing $3.4 million towards a detailed business case for the rail line to get the project back on track after it had stalled under the former coalition government. I understand the preliminary evaluation has now been completed, so the state government and the Ipswich City Council need to work with the federal government to finalise the scope of works and get the project to the detailed business case stage as quickly as possible. This is one of Ipswich region's highest priority projects and has just been endorsed again in Infrastructure Australia's latest priority list. We need to get moving and shovel ready.

The Crisafulli state Liberal government have so far failed to deliver for Ipswich, and their first state budget was a missed opportunity for our region. I'm very hopeful, although I'm not quite sure, that they'll have a road-to-Damascus conversion experience and all of a sudden recognise that Ipswich is one of the biggest cities in Queensland and deserves the infrastructure to match the growth in its population.

See this speech in context