Cameron Thompson (Blair, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was an incredible day on the Ipswich Motorway today for residents of the electorate of Blair who rely on the motorway as their route for getting to and from the city of Brisbane. I heard of one person this morning, confronted by the huge pile-up on the road today, who had left for the airport at six o’clock in the morning to pick up their parents and still had not arrived at the airport by 10 o’clock. This situation was brought about by a collision between two trucks which left one B-double dangling over the edge of the Woogaroo Creek Bridge in the area of Goodna just across from the member for Oxley’s office.

This is an incredible vision for the people of Ipswich of the future that awaits them if the Labor Party is allowed to get into office and proceeds with its crazy plan to dig up the Ipswich Motorway and conduct roadworks along the full length of the motorway for the next four years, plus a year and a half of planning. That means that the solution that the Labor Party offer, to dig up the motorway and try to upgrade it, could not be delivered until 2013 at the earliest. But the vision that we see today, following the accident with the B-double this morning, is of motorists on the motorway being left with a speed limit of 60 kilometres an hour now, with only one lane to travel in, and the speed in that lane is going to be reduced to 40 kilometres an hour overnight. What is going to happen is that we will have this one lane of traffic moving at 40 kilometres an hour for an indeterminate period while we wait for the poor workers of the Department of Main Roads to repair the abutments on Woogaroo Creek Bridge.

This is what awaits people in my electorate if the Labor Party are allowed to get in and scrap the fully funded Goodna bypass for which the Commonwealth has provided the funding and embarked upon the purchase of properties for resumptions to make way for it. What will happen if the Labor Party get in is that they will kill off the Goodna bypass and they will set about digging up the Ipswich Motorway. So we will have a full length of roadworks happening through to 2013 if the Labor Party gets in. That means that they are going to be digging up the most heavily congested section of the Ipswich Motorway between Dinmore and the Goodna merge, should they get in at the end of this year, through to 2013. The alternative, which is funded by the Commonwealth government already, is to build the Goodna bypass, an alternative road on a greenfield site where it would not be necessary to disrupt traffic during construction.

When will the Labor Party get the message from the electors of Oxley and Blair? The people in this area are crying out for the construction of the Goodna bypass. I have been listening to them on this and the Commonwealth has their 100 per cent support, very strong support, not only in the seat of Blair but in the seat of Oxley as well. But the Labor Party are thumbing their noses at them and saying, ‘We’re determined to dig up the only road you have to travel on.’ This is a road carrying 100,000 vehicles a day at this most heavily congested spot. The coalition government is already committed to building a bypass around it on a greenfield site so as not to disrupt the traffic but to provide for quick construction and a solution to last through to 2032.

What are the electors getting from the Leader of the Opposition and the Labor Party? They are getting this frustrating proposal to dig up this road, to turn it into a traffic shemozzle for this 5½-year period, a situation that will get much worse under Labor and can only return, at best, to the hopeless situation it is already in today. This is an appalling situation. The Labor Party deserve to be condemned. People in my electorate strongly endorse the Goodna bypass. This is going to be a big issue in the seat of Blair and it is going to be a big issue in the seat of Oxley, and the Labor candidates in those seats need to actively get out there and represent the people of their electorates and stop holding two fingers up to them, which is what they are doing at present. (Time expired)