Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You can imagine the frustration in an outer metropolitan seat like Bowman as residents attempt to get road improvements to address the increasing congestion in one of the fastest growing cities in the developed world. South-East Queensland, that 200-kilometre city, is absolutely reliant on adequate ways of reaching areas of employment. As an outer metropolitan city with just four routes into Brisbane, these routes are incredibly important to locals. Three of those four routes are state roads and there have been promises from the state Labor government of an investment of $1.5 billion in infrastructure. But where that money is, no-one has any idea.

These roads have been quantified for the degree of congestion measured by numbers of minutes per kilometre in peak periods. The numbers aren't good. I'm not going to pretend that it is any worse than Sydney or Melbourne, but Brisbane is used to having approximately a 40-minute to one-hour commute from the outskirts of the city. Even that number is now starting to blow out. It is a very serious matter and it makes immigration a key issue of debate in that neck of the woods.

In our particular case, we have Victoria Point. Just this week, another 231 townhouses were approved on one of these major routes with no promise of any form of road upgrade to match the additional population moving to that area. You have the invidious situation of a state regional infrastructure plan that is determined by the state government, and the council just becomes a referee with a whistle, applying the rules but really unable to make any decision based on adequacy of infrastructure because, the minute they do refuse an application, it goes straight to the Planning and Environment Court, where costs are borne by the ratepayer. It is a very, very difficult area. No-one is going to pretend that all of a sudden South-East Queensland will be building infrastructure prior to population, but the people of Redlands can clearly see they are not getting their fair share of what the state government should be doing.

We have a roundabout on Wellington and Shaw streets, and the $3.5 million federal commitment in 2016 to upgrade that roundabout has just been refused by the state government, which said that even with the money they are not going to do the job. So the state opposition, just last year, committed another $5 million to that very same project and even then they said, 'We're sorry. For the $8½ million, we are not going to do that upgrade either,' which is an enormous frustration to locals who wonder just how much they have to put in the pot before the state government will take up this project for a very, very frustrating intersection for locals.

Just 12 months ago, a state Labor MP said, 'Vote for me and vote for Victoria Point bypass.' No sooner was that MP elected than the promise was actually a feasibility study. Of course, you can't drive on a feasibility study. So it was a promise of a half a million dollars to look into the problem. We can see where that's heading, a further three years of further delays. I had to direct through council upgrades to basically make the Victoria Point bypass become a reality. So now it is federal money directed through council, through our annual commitments to councils around the country, that is funding this Victoria Point upgrade to take traffic off this congested part of Redlands, where these 231 townhouses are being built.

The Redland Bay to Cleveland route is a very frustrating route as well. The council said, 'Out of our pockets, we will use ratepayers' money to upgrade this road that no fewer than 11 times narrows from two lanes to one and back to two, depending on where development has occurred and where infrastructure has enabled it to be upgraded. Imagine that: 11 congested bottlenecks going from two to one lane and back again. So the council said, 'We'll fund it—the state road—as long as it's paid back by the state government down the track.' There was no agreement either.

There is an evolving frustration that we have this almost impenetrable state government when it comes to road infrastructure. But they seem to be happy to build bigger bus stops. They have no problem with bus stops. So what we get are fabulous, elaborate, delicious artistic impressions of bus stops with draping hanging gardens and beautiful bus stop waiting areas, but nobody seems to realise that, between bus stops, you actually need a road. Buses use roads as well. They don't just hop or levitate or float from bus stop to bus stop. With this emerging Labor preoccupation with public transport, they think they can actually stop investing in roads and just basically build larger bus stops. That reality will become clearly obvious with the incredibly important arterials, which are the routes through to Mt Gravatt, the main Old Cleveland Road route to the city, the Cleveland Redland Bay Road north-south route, and the Beenleigh Redland Bay Road route. It sounds repetitive, but they are all roads that need to be upgraded. It leaves the fabulous suburb of Redland Bay as the largest populated area of Queensland that you can leave by only one lane. We can do far better than this, but it will require the Labor Party in the state of Queensland to the come to the party.