Alex Somlyay (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Transport and Regional Services. Would the minister update the House on recent developments in planning work on Queensland’s Bruce Highway. Is the minister aware of any impediments to progressing this work?

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Minister for Transport and Regional Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Fairfax for the question. The Bruce Highway is very important to his electorate; it is the main access route to Fairfax and indeed to the whole of the Queensland coast. It is a very important road, and one which the Australian government have committed to provide significant funding for under the AusLink arrangement—with a further $268 million boost for the northern sections of the highway in the recent federal budget. We are also committed to ‘four-lane’ the Bruce Highway past Gympie by 2020. Projects have been under way, particularly around Caboolture, for ‘six-laning’—to endeavour to achieve that objective.

About 18 months ago, the Australian government commissioned consultants to undertake a study on the route for the next 62 kilometres of the highway, between Cooroy and Curra. That project is well advanced. The consultants have had out for public comment six alternative routes that might be considered for the bypass of Gympie and the upgrading of the highway. There has naturally been public concern about each of those routes, because of the large number of properties that will be affected.

Imagine the shock of everybody in the region, a year and a half into this study, to find out that the Queensland government intends to flood nine kilometres of the existing highway and nearly all of the options that have been under consideration. It is going to flood the areas where we have been designing new roads. The Acting Premier, Ms Bligh, has said that the government has known about these proposed dams for a long time and that everybody should have been aware that it was going to happen. If that is the case, why didn’t the Queensland government include this piece of information in the parameters for the study? It designed the terms of reference and has been involved in the steering group, but it did not bother to tell anybody that it intended to flood nine kilometres of the area that is under study.

The questioner asked: are there any impediments to the progress of the upgrading to a four-lane highway? There is a fair bit of impediment. A lot of the area is going to be under water. It is not just the road that is going under water; 870 properties are likely to be flooded, including Queensland’s largest dairy farm. The impact on the dairy industry will be such that Queensland will probably cease to be self-sufficient in dairy products. The town of Kandanga will go under water and will probably have to be moved entirely. At least 1,000 people will be moved out of their homes for this mega-dam that the Queensland government has just invented over recent days. I am told that drilling for this dam site has started. Armed guards are surrounding the drillers. Early word is that the dam site is likely to be unable to support a structure of this nature anyhow.

The reality is that the Labor government in Queensland is trying to hide its debacle in the health system by flooding half of its constituents and putting out of business a most significant road building project for Queensland. This is an appalling example of deceit and dishonesty by the Queensland government. The reality is that there will be no capacity for us to maintain the pace on the construction of this vital highway network until we know what parts of Queensland the Labor government intends to flood next.