Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to talk to the House about the plans that the Australian Labor Party have announced to widen the Kessels Road corridor in my electorate, through to the Mount Gravatt-Capalaba Road and through the honourable member for Bonner’s electorate, to create a Kessels highway extension of the Ipswich Motorway through suburbia. The Labor Party’s plans are quite clear. This is why they are in favour of widening the existing Ipswich Motorway corridor, starting at Granard Road, Rocklea. They will head down through Granard Road, Riawena Road, Kessels Road and Mount Gravatt-Capalaba Road to allow a rat-run for interstate trucks through all the days and nights of the week, to allow them a short-cut to the port of Brisbane. It is a folly which shows how arrogant and stupid they are in opposition and how sad and arrogant they would be if they were ever in government.

The reason I make that point is very plain: last November I wrote to 28,000 households in my electorate, and 84 per cent of people wrote back to me and said that putting Kessels Road under Mains Road was the wrong option but putting Mains Road under Kessels Road worked for local residents, and that is what they are in favour of—84 per cent of people in Moreton therefore are saying that the Labor Party’s announcement of doing the exact opposite to what would suit local residents is a big mistake; 84 per cent of people in my electorate therefore are very concerned that the Labor Party’s complete arrogance and stupidity, their crazy Kessels highway plan, will put big interstate trucks ahead of the transport flows and the transport corridors along Mains Road.

Just last week, a longstanding local Sunnybank resident, a former Labor state member and a former Brisbane Labor deputy mayor, Len Ardill, told ABC Radio that whatever happened at the Kessels and Mains Road intersection had to favour local residents and had to deal with the traffic flows along Mains Road. If you look at what the Labor Party have proposed, there will still be traffic lights restricting the flow of traffic along Mains Road dealing with vehicles coming off Kessels Road because of the necessary off ramps for this new Kessels highway. So local residents do not get one less set of lights when it comes to the Kessels Road-Mains Road intersection; in fact, if they are turning, as many do, from Sunnybank to go down Kessels Road to Garden City, there is a fair chance they will have two sets of lights where there is currently one. So the delays are only going to get greater under Labor’s proposal, which is why I have said quite plainly—and I have had the Deputy Prime Minister there most recently, Mr Vaile; of course, the Minister for Local Government, Territories and Roads, Mr Lloyd, has also been there, had a look and understands it; the Prime Minister has been there and he understands it—that by doing anything at that intersection other than putting Mains Road under Kessels Road locals are going to be disadvantaged, but the Labor Party have completely forgotten about that.

It is not hard to fathom that, if you are going to spend $300 million, as Labor have proposed, to put Kessels under Mains to create this Kessels highway, it is all about more trucks coming. It is all about more heavy interstate trucks coming off the Ipswich Motorway going onto the extension of Ipswich Motorway along the Kessels Road corridor. They might slip through the Mains Road intersection all right but they will end up down at Garden City—Garden City is a big regional shopping centre on the south side of Brisbane and it has already got world’s worst practice as far as traffic jams are concerned—so all we are going to see is yet again locals disadvantaged by heavy vehicles.

I know the member for Bonner can speak very eloquently about this too, but if you go along Mount Gravatt-Capalaba Road through Wishart you will have more B-double trucks driving along that road than you currently have past people’s letter boxes. It is bad enough that people through Robertson and Salisbury put up with that in my part of southside Brisbane and when you consider that the current 20-foot equivalent units, the TEUs, measure out of the Queensland rail freight yard at Acacia Ridge is some 380,000 TEUs a year and the forecast is for 750,000; it is bad enough when you consider what it is now. Those forecasts show how bad it will be in the years ahead, so what does Labor do? Announce locals can wait while it is made easier for interstate trucks.

The widening of the Kessels Road corridor will wipe out thousands of local jobs as local businesses will be gone. They are not my words; they are the comments of local retailers long the Kessels Road corridor. Once Kessels Road clags up even further, the trucks will do what they are already doing now in increasing numbers—that is, starting to use alternative roads like McCullough Street and Padstow Road through Sunnybank, Macgregor and Eight Mile Plains. They even use Granadilla Street, a street that winds through suburbia between the two. It is all perfectly illegal, but the thin blue line of the Queensland Police Service is so thin and narrow that they never get around to nabbing these trucks.

All Labor is planning to do is bring more and more trucks. We have already invested $1.3 million to take 221,000 heavy interstate trucks off local roads at night with a toll-free trial over the last couple of years. The government have supported my approach to take the toll off the southern Brisbane bypass, which is the Logan and Gateway motorways. That is the road that these heavy interstate trucks should be on. They should go on the Logan Motorway at Gailes. They should travel along the Logan Motorway through the bottom end of the city of Brisbane, come up the Gateway Motorway in the midst of Karawatha Forest and head to the Port of Brisbane that way. Of course, the Queensland government have got a toll on that. It is the only toll road in Queensland.

We have campaigned long and hard to get that toll removed, and if the toll was to come off then I think more and more trucks would make good use of it, particularly if the state government and the Brisbane City Council combined to make a no-go zone for heavy vehicles other than local deliveries in and around the Greater Sunnybank area. They cannot say it cannot be done, because I campaigned in favour of such a proposal when it came to Beaudesert Road at Moorooka a few years ago. The Labor councillor at the time said, ‘You can’t do that.’ Interestingly enough, Lord Mayor Councillor Newman and Graham Quirk, who is in charge of roads in the city of Brisbane, have made it happen, and local residents at the local school at Moorooka have got a far more palatable environment than they had because trucks are told to go around—to use Ipswich Road instead.

It also needs to be done at Fairfield Road and Venner Road through Fairfield and Annerley. We need to make sure that local residents are not tripping over big trucks which are just finding their way, with no signs, no measurements about where they should go and no restrictions—just find your way. Trucks are like water: you cannot stop them but you can direct their flow. Let us face it, around Oxley Road through Sherwood, Graceville and Chelmer they feel the effect of this lack of planning and lack of concern by the state government and indeed the Brisbane City Council.

The need for noise barrier fences is also something that is well established in the debates in this place. The government has, through the good offices of the former Minister for Transport and Regional Services, the member for Gwydir, Mr Anderson, made available money half-a-dozen years ago for noise barrier fences along Riawena Road, Salisbury. Last year’s state election campaign saw the member for Yeerongpilly, Mr Finn, again promise that fences would be built. Commonwealth money has gone in, millions of dollars. Nothing has been done. Where has the money gone to? Riawena Road residents are putting up with this. The residents around Salisbury who back into Riawena Road are sick of the noise and likewise people at Drewvale, a purpose-built road, which had a toll put on it by Labor—the only toll road in Queensland—through Drewvale and Kuraby, are also demanding that there be some sort of noise attenuation program introduced there.

At the Kuraby tollbooth at Persse Road—and if I could get rid of the tollbooth this would not be a problem—residents are awoken at night as trucks have to slow down for the tollbooth, using their air brakes, and then speed up and rev away. They go from 100 down to zero and back up again. There are no noise barrier fences for residents around Kuraby and they are right to say they want something different. In the case of Drewvale, residents are hearing the noise from over the hills and far away, but it is nevertheless bouncing around. What we need to do is look at the example of the Brisbane City Council’s work along Compton Road where a riparian corridor has been built. Essentially, two large tunnels have been built over the top of Compton Road, joining two parts of Karawatha Forest. I think the same thing should be done on the Logan Motorway and the Gateway Motorway. That would control some of the noise issues and give some life to the ambitions of people in the Oxley Creek Catchment Association with regard to the Flinders Peak to Karawatha riparian corridor. We need to use roads like the Logan and Gateway motorways. We need to take the tolls off these roads. We need to get the big interstate trucks off Kessels Road, McCullough Street, Padstow Road, Beenleigh Road and Compton Road. And local residents should not have to pay a toll, especially at the Kuraby tollbooth.

I have talked about this and we have acted. We have got some results; we need more. The last thing we need to do is to allow Labor’s crazy Kessels highway plan to come to fruition. I will be campaigning on this agenda item very vigorously between now and polling day. (Time expired)