Ken O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I want to talk about roads in Flynn. Flynn is 130,000 square kilometres and has many roads. Some are federally funded, some are state funded and some are local government funded. There is an immediate need in Flynn for the Woorabinda-Bohemia Downs road to be upgraded and sealed. The Blackwater-Rolleston Road has 17 kilometres of road still unsealed. From Springsure to Tambo there is a stretch of probably about 80 kilometres that need doing quickly. The Panorama Creek crossing at Rolleston holds up traffic on the inland highway to the north and to the west every time there are a few inches of rain, which is really badly needed at the moment. The state government do the highways on a four-to-one basis. That is four by the feds and one by the state in every situation.

But it is not all bad news over the last few years. We have partaken in some really good big projects. First I will talk about Yeppen roundabout just south of Rockhampton. In the 2008, 2010 and 2013 floods Rockhampton was cut off at Yeppen. In late November we opened the Yeppen Bridge, and now we are continuing with that project in stage 2. It is a $296 million project that will go from the Yeppen Bridge and roundabout to Egans Hill. That cost will be split $60 million from the state and $236 million from the federal government. The $85 million project which was opened in November is working well and does not allow the bottlenecks that did exist between Gracemere and Rockhampton.

The Calliope Crossroads, the much-needed $150 million project that was talked about for the last 20 years, is finally finished and traffic is now moving freely north, south, east and west. It has not been officially opened yet, but once the upgrades to the Dawson Highway to facilitate a new service station—which was built over with the new highway—are complete it will be open in the very near future.

We are continuing to upgrade the highway between Mount Larcom and Laws Creek, a $7.8 million project on the Bruce Highway that should commence by March of this year

The Kin Kora roundabout is a joint venture between the state government and the federal government—$12.5 million from each government. It will alleviate the 13,000 cars a day jammed up on that roundabout at. Kin Kora and Philip Street. Main Roads are having a lot of trouble because there are a lot of services underneath the current roundabout. I am talking about water, electricity and telephone. That all has to be relocated, and that is the probably half the problem of building the new upgraded lights that Kin Kora.

Presently there is work going on on the Bruce Highway at the intersection at Marmor. That is a $4.1 million job. That will take away the safety issues there, and it is also a truck stop for many trucks. We have regulations where our truck drivers have to pull over at certain times and of course we need to have facilities for those guys to pull over.

A lot of work has been done at Gin Gin, both north and south. The entrances to Gin Gin on both sides have been ridiculed over the years, but these have finally been fixed. It is 1.6 kilometres south and another at 6.3 kilometres north. That will improve the north-south Gin Gin road.

In all, we are working hard to alleviate the disadvantages on the roads because those roads do carry a lot of equipment, both large and small, to the mining industry—(Time expired)