Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The 2008 Inner city rail capacity study found that the demand for train services during morning peak times in Brisbane will reach between 70,000 and 80,000 people by 2016. By 2026, modelling suggests that this will have increased to well over 100,000 people each and every day. If nothing is done, the rail network is anticipated to be at capacity, but there is a solution. The solution is not the solution that my colleague Anthony Albanese, the member for Grayndler, referred to as the Bombay solution, which was to just rip out seats in trains to fit more people in, as the previous LNP government attempted in Queensland. That is not the solution. It is also not the second-rate BaT tunnel—bus and train tunnel—that Campbell Newman proposed when the LNP was in government in Queensland. The solution is the Cross River Rail project, which is a project that would allow an extra 17,000 people to travel on the Brisbane rail network in the peak period.

The Cross River Rail project would have taken 14,000 cars off the road. Brisbane commuters lose about 11 million hours annually stuck in traffic, and I have been one of them myself. Congestion is really costly; it causes long travel times, heightened pollution and increased vehicle running costs, and all of those things affect the productivity of a city like Brisbane. Cross River Rail would have opened up more services from Brisbane's northern and western suburbs, as well as the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast.

It is an investment in Brisbane's future and it is shovel-ready. The feasibility study is done, thanks to the $20 million in funding from the previous federal Labor government back in 2009, when the former member for Griffith was the Prime Minister. The preferred route is done, the environmental impact study is done, and it was ticked off by the Queensland Coordinator-General. The Bligh Labor government in Queensland took the project to Infrastructure Australia in 2011 for independent analysis. In the 2011-12 financial year, Infrastructure Australia recommended the project to the federal government as ready to proceed, with a positive benefit-cost ratio of 1.41.

So what happened? Unfortunately, Tony Abbott happened. The Prime Minister happened. There had been an agreement reached between Commonwealth and the Newman government in Queensland to fund Cross River Rail. The announcement was ready to go, but the Commonwealth money—notwithstanding that it was in the budget—was pulled by the Abbott government on the week that it had been due to be announced by the then Premier, Campbell Newman.

Tony Abbott, when he was Leader of the Opposition, actually said that it was not the federal government's place to fund urban rail projects. You wonder why this government bothers having an infrastructure ministry. Why not just have a roads ministry, if this this government does not believe in funding rail. He said that the federal government should stick to its knitting—and the knitting is roads. How unbelievably short sighted, for someone who wants to be known as the infrastructure prime minister.

Research commissioned by the Australasian Railway Association in its 2014 study, TheValue of Action versus the Cost of Inaction, found that investing in rail to reduce road congestion in Brisbane would achieve the same reduction in congestion at only 57 per cent of the cost of road-based strategies. It was the former Labor government that lifted infrastructure investment from 20th in the OECD to first. This current government ought to have a commitment to infrastructure that includes rail infrastructure. It ought to put its funding and support behind urban rail, because urban rail reduces congestion, and reducing congestion aids and improves the productivity of our cities.

We have all seen the Grattan Institute research about the amount of time it takes for working people to get to the places where the jobs are, which tend to be in the CBD. Rail projects can assist with reducing that congestion and can help connect working people to jobs, which is what we need.

Thankfully, the former LNP state government has been replaced with a new Labor government, led by Premier Palaszczuk, and we have a wonderful new Queensland Minister for Transport and Infrastructure in the Deputy, Premier, the Hon. Jackie Trad MP, who is also within my electorate of Griffith. We now have a minister and a deputy premier in Jackie Trad who is prepared to stand up for the people of Brisbane. She understands just how important rail infrastructure is. She understands that the government ought to commit to ensuring that we have good, productive rail infrastructure.

The people of Queensland will not cop a failure to support the infrastructure needs of the future. The people of Queensland are very clear about what they want when it comes to the way that Queensland should work. A really good example is the comprehensive rejection of asset sales at the last election. I call on this federal government to start supporting rail infrastructure. (Time expired)

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