Margaret May (McPherson, 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 funding allocations from the Australian government to road projects in Queensland, particularly in my electorate of McPherson.

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

I thank the honourable member for McPherson for her question and recognise her keen advocacy for upgrading the road infrastructure in her fast-growing part of Queensland. Indeed, the Australian government has allocated over $3 billion to Queensland for road construction projects and other infrastructure in the AusLink program. It is a very substantial investment and includes over $1 billion worth of road construction projects in south-east Queensland alone. We have a real commitment to building some of the vital infrastructure that is necessary in Queensland. Indeed, our funding to Queensland under AusLink represents a 119 per cent increase over the previous five years. So that is a very substantial investment.

The honourable member asked what other road projects are under consideration in south-east Queensland. At this time, when political parties are putting their manifests to the Queensland people as to what they are going to spend on roads, I thought I would turn to the Labor Party’s policy statement in relation to roads for Queensland. In it, the Queensland Labor Party boast that they have had a capital works increase of a massive 58 per cent. Well, if 58 per cent is massive, what is our 119 per cent? I do not think they could find words to describe that. If you took our 119 per cent increase out of the amounts that Labor are claiming credit for in Queensland, there would be very little left indeed. Labor have never had any commitment to roads in Queensland and over the years they have allowed the infrastructure to fall away.

They have listed four projects that are currently underway in Queensland. The biggest of these is the $1.6 billion Gateway duplication. Actually, I do not think it has started yet but they have put this on their list of projects that are underway. They did not bother to mention, of course, that it is going to be fully funded by tolls. In fact, the Queensland government will actually make a profit out of this $1.6 billion worth of expenditure. But this is how they manage to boost their road expenditure to get a massive 58 per cent figure.

They also frequently refer in their policy document to the Tugun Bypass—a project that I know the honourable member for McPherson is keenly interested in—never again mentioning the fact that $120 million of the cost of that project is actually being provided by the Australian government. Even though it is a Queensland government road, we are contributing $120 million, but in the Labor Party policy document there is no acknowledgement whatever of the contribution of the federal government towards that project.

Of course, that is fairly typical. In fact, I am a little surprised that the Labor Party would even want to mention the Tugan Bypass in the context of an election, because at the last election we all remember when Premier Beattie went down on the eve of the election breathless and announced a new route for the Tugun Bypass which was going to clean up a score of houses along the edge of the airport. The people of Currumbin remember the Beattie drive-pass. It was bye-bye to the infamous Merri Rose and welcome to Jann Stuckey as a result of that commitment to the Tugun Bypass. The reality is that here we have a Labor government that has failed Queensland on road infrastructure and has nothing to offer for new road infrastructure when they go to the people on Saturday. All it does is seek to take credit for the roads that the Commonwealth is funding and providing as a part of our AusLink network.