Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thursday, 1 February 2007 was a momentous occasion in the long-running Ipswich Motorway saga. The official sod-turning ceremony held by me and attended by local Ipswich city councillors and the local state member signified the first phase of the Ipswich Motorway upgrade with the Gailes-Logan interchange being upgraded at a cost of $255 million. This has been a long time coming. In fact, it has been over nine years that I, along with the community, have been actively campaigning for this much needed upgrade of this notorious road. The first phase represents getting half the job done with the Oxley section of the Ipswich Motorway fully committed to be upgraded.

The opening, however, is not without its fair share of controversy. The federal main roads minister failed to invite not only me as the local member but also other representatives, both elected and community based, to the government’s own sod-turning ceremony. This government’s political stunt sought nothing more than to maximise local Liberal Party members’ exposure and is nothing short of a disgrace, especially having the federal member for Blair there. He has continually opposed, delayed and done everything he can to make sure this upgrade does not go ahead. In one of life’s great ironies, the member for Blair was there, all smiles, beaming away like it was he who had actually delivered the funding. How he sleeps at night nobody knows.

It is also important to note that only half the job has been done. It is just not good enough. We need to continue lobbying the Howard government to commit to upgrade the Liberal Party Blair electorate section of the Ipswich Motorway. There no longer exists any argument that we cannot or should not upgrade the Ipswich Motorway. It is now just a case of the federal government getting on with the other half of the job. The interchange launch at Gailes highlights the need for strong leadership and cooperation on the Ipswich Motorway. It is quite plain and simple: there is a safety issue as well as a traffic problem that needs to be rectified now.

Over the past nine years of campaigning for an upgrade, there has been an overwhelming consensus from the community and engineers that the motorway has to be upgraded, no matter what else may happen in the future. The full upgrade remains the best value for money option and the timeliest solution for the Ipswich Motorway. Future infrastructure needs must also be met now for the western corridor so that it can cope with future predicted growth in the area. We need to seriously look at real solutions for a full bypass, not some half-baked idea for a partial bypass through the western corridor at an impossible cost—estimated at $2.58 billion at the moment for the half bypass—which will do very little to alleviate our current traffic problems.

This is the way forward if we are serious about planning for the future of the western corridor and addressing its exponential growth rate. We do not want more reports, just genuine solutions that are affordable and achievable. Sometimes you can be said to steal the show. In the case of the official sod-turning ceremony held by me, it was not a case of theft; it was merely a case of returning rightful property to the community.