Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was published today in The Australian newspaper that the Melbourne Institute's most recent household survey had the people of Brisbane experiencing the second longest commute in the country. This is the first time Brisbane came in second—behind Sydney, of course, but before Melbourne. It is reflective of the pressure of an increased population not only on Queensland's capital city but also on the south-east corner of Queensland. The population trajectory has Queensland growing enormously over the years ahead. In South-East Queensland projections are that the population will reach around about 6.3 million people by 2050.

A challenge, therefore, for all governments is to have infrastructure catch up with and, ideally, get ahead of the population curve. Thanks to the strong economy of this Morrison government, we're doing our bit. Over the forward estimates, the next four years alone, about $9.7 billion will be spent in Queensland. It will be going to vitally important infrastructure, in particular roads and rail. Unfortunately, a challenge we have is the Queensland state Labor government and their complete absence of an understanding of infrastructure. This is sad. We know the reason. It's no secret. They don't know how to run the economy and they don't have money; therefore they can't spend it. But it means that even our plans to bust congestion within the south-east corner of our state are being held back, because a lot of the major projects are actually on roads and rail that are owned by the state but to which the federal government is making a serious financial contribution. We have to keep fighting the good fight as much as we can even though we're the ones that are carrying the load.

The Infrastructure New South Wales team did an analysis recently that compared the spend on infrastructure of different states and territories. The House would be interested to know the conclusion they reached—that there is no state or territory spending less on infrastructure as a percentage of their revenue than the state of Queensland, bar none. On as good an apples-to-apples comparison as you can get, no state government spends less on infrastructure than Queensland does. Of course there's hope that next October, when there's an election, the people of Queensland will finally say no to the Labor government and we'll have an LNP government in town.

But there's also hope because we need to ensure we are working on long-term solutions. Right now we're working on three things together with the state government and the SEQ Council of Mayors. The first is that we have a city deal. A statement of intent was signed earlier this year between the federal government, the Queensland state government and the SEQ Council of Mayors for a 20-year vision to be mapped out for the south-east corner of the state and for that vision to articulate key major projects, infrastructure amongst them. The second is a bid for the 2032 Olympics. Here again we must see the three tiers of government working as one team. It is the only way we can prosecute that case. The third is fast rail. There are three business cases currently underway: one from the Sunshine Coast to Brisbane; another one from Gold Coast to Brisbane, which is soon to begin; and the third from Toowoomba through Ipswich to Brisbane. We need those three business cases to come together as an SEQ fast rail network. With those three components pulled together—city deal, Olympic bid and SEQ fast rail network—we can plan for the long-term future as three tiers of government while we try to get the short-term stuff done.

House adjourned at 20 : 00