Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. How is the government investing in vital road infrastructure that will improve road safety in Queensland?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Longman for his question and his active pursuit of infrastructure for the area north of Brisbane that he represents. On the front page of the Australian today there was an article and a photo of Mr Wayne Sachs, a Queensland ambulance officer who came to my office on 24 February to make a case. He came as someone who has witnessed the fact that there have been 13 fatalities on the Cooroy to Curra section of the Bruce Highway since 2002. Mr Sachs put forward his personal experience of what it was like to literally see people expire after they have been through these accidents.

This section of the Bruce Highway was not included on the Infrastructure Australia priority list. It was a pipeline project. It was not included because, in terms of the rigorous economic analysis that Infrastructure Australia undertook of projects that were submitted, it did not have the requisite amount of freight and passenger transport. But there was absolutely no doubt about this. Whilst it might not have met the economic test, it met the common-sense test, it met the decency test and it met the Australian test—which is about making sure that the national interest is looked after. So, in this budget, in spite of the pressures that are on due to the global economic recession, we made room to provide funds—not from the BAF—for this vital project. There was some $488 million from the Commonwealth and $125 million contributed from Queensland, because we knew that we needed to listen not just to economists but to people out there doing work in communities. And this is a government that will listen and will act. Supporting this project, which will support up to 650 jobs, will be good for the economy and good for safety.

One wonders why this neglect happened over such a long period of time. Indeed, one wonders why, given that the shadow minister for transport, who is the local member for Wide Bay—this road is in his electorate—was reported in the same article as ‘travelling the highway regularly, with his heart in his mouth’. He is quoted as saying:

I’m always pleased when I turn off. You never feel completely safe on that road.

And the shadow minister for transport is on the record as saying that this is a dreadfully accident-prone section that is rated as the worst piece of highway in Australia. That is what the shadow minister for transport said. He sat in this parliament in government for 12 years—with 10 years as a minister and a period as the minister for transport—but nothing was done over that long period of time.

I wondered why nothing had been done over that period of time so I went back and had a look at what they did in government and at what they allocated in budgets—not at what they said during election campaigns but at what they actually did when it came to nation-building infrastructure. In the Department of Transport and Regional Services budget statements in 2002-03, under the heading ‘Federal government keeps Queensland moving’, made by the Deputy Prime Minister, Leader of the National Party at the time and Minister for Transport and Regional Services, John Anderson, it stated in relation to the Cooroy-Gympie route study that the government would establish a $1 million study that would ‘examine possible future routes for the Bruce Highway’. But then they said—and these are your budget papers—’Construction is likely to be 15 or 20 years away.’

No action was taken by the former government and yet a campaign was run demanding action by this government. Well, this government have listened to the community. That is why we have provided this funding. It has taken a Labor government to build this important infrastructure project in safe National Party territory because the government is determined to build the infrastructure that Australia needs.