Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My constituency question is to the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport. Will the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport update the House on the government's $6.7 billion investment in the Bruce Highway? How is this investment creating jobs, improving productivity and saving lives?

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do thank the member for his question and I congratulate him for carrying on the strong work of the former member for Wide Bay, Warren Truss. I recently attended with the member to the Cooroy to Curra section. It is good to see the Turnbull-Joyce government's plan for jobs and growth in action on the ground.

The member for Wide Bay is the co-chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Road Safety. I know he takes that responsibility very seriously. He is also a former traffic investigator. And the member for Wide Bay has firsthand experience of what it is like to turn up at a serious accident and have to attend with the grieving families associated with those events. I take the opportunity to thank him for his work in the past, but also to recognise those first responders around our nation who will be required to do their job again this Christmas.

This government is passionate about providing safer roads, as I know members on both sides of the House are. The $307 million commitment to the Cooroy to Curra section is a major commitment to a $384 million project which is going to make some significant improvements to safety in the member's own electorate around the township of Gympie in Wide Bay. We expect that the work will be completed by the middle of 2018.

It is often said—and I have repeated it many times in this place—that when we are investing in good infrastructure we are actually changing people's lives and we are saving people's lives. It changes lives by improving productivity. In relation to the Bruce Highway in particular, it is taking away the need for closures with associated flooding, but obviously it is saving lives. The investment in the Bruce Highway is in the order of a $6.7 billion commitment by the Turnbull-Joyce government for this 1,700 kilometre highway which is the arterial of life along the north-south corridor of Queensland. Road safety, as members would be aware, is all about investing in safer roads, and making sure we have safer drivers and safer cars along those roads.

Some of the work we have seen in Queensland that has been particular successful is a very cost-effective treatment: the widening of centre lines. This was introduced in Queensland in 2010. And we have seen a 43 per cent reduction in fatal crashes on those sections where the centre lines have been widened. It has been a very cost effective treatment. So I want to congratulate the member for Wide Bay for his advocacy, for the work he has done in the past in relation to road safety, but also in relation to the work he is doing now in helping to make the Bruce Highway a more efficient and safer network.

Many members on this side of the House in the LNP have raised their concerns in relation to the future of funding for the Bruce Highway. The member for Fisher, the member for Fairfax, the member for Dawson, the member for Capricornia, the member for Petrie, the member for Dickson, the member for Hinkler and the member for Flynn are all very passionate about seeing the coalition's investment in better and safer roads in Queensland continue into the future. We have a record $50 billion investment in infrastructure across the nation and we need to make sure that Queensland does receive its fair share and that we deliver the infrastructure that Queensland needs.