Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Environment and Water) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to once again speak about a matter of great concern to residents of my community, which is the significant traffic snarl, not to mention the significant safety risk, caused by the level crossing at Coorparoo train station on Cavendish Road. I know, Deputy Speaker Vasta, that you're well aware of the risks of these level crossings because, of course, you've got the Lindum level crossing in your electorate. Coorparoo's level crossing is still a significant problem. This is a place where there have been 61 near misses in the decade to 2021. It's particularly concerning to me because it's a very busy road. It's adjacent to two schools, the Coorparoo Secondary College and the Brisbane School of Distance Education, and it's quite near Giffin Park, which is where the Coorparoo Roos Australian football team plays. It's in a very busy part of Brisbane, Coorparoo.

This is a project that should be fixed. The RACQ have once again this year, in their correspondence with me about their federal election priorities, pointed out this level crossing, among a few others in Brisbane, as one priority to be resolved. In my view it is something that does need to be resolved. I've been campaigning on it and lobbying for it for the entire time I've been in the parliament—even before I was in the parliament, in fact. I've been pointing out that this is a significant problem because of the safety risk, as I said. I'm well aware, Deputy Speaker, that there was a fatality at the level crossing at Lindum in your electorate and that, shortly after that fatality, there was an announcement of significant funding from the federal government to fix that level crossing in your electorate. Frankly, I don't want to have to see a fatality at the Coorparoo level crossing; I think it should be fixed.

The safety concerns at this crossing are the primary concerns, but another significant concern is the impact on traffic. If you're heading down Old Cleveland Road into the CBD, which a number of people from Bonner and a number of people from Bowman as well as people from Griffith do, this crossing at peak hour has a flow-on effect on other traffic in the area. It's on Cavendish Road, but it's one of the main cross-streets onto Old Cleveland Road at Coorparoo, so when there's a traffic snarl at that level crossing it has a flow-on effect on other traffic. It remains not only a significant safety concern but also a creator of a really major peak-hour traffic snarl. When we think about traffic, it's easy to think about things in quite dispassionate terms when you're talking about transport infrastructure and those sorts of things. But what is traffic? Traffic is an impediment to people spending time with their families, their friends, their loved ones. This means that there is an imperative for us as federal representatives, when we're talking about the quality of life in our cities, to really speak up for better transport infrastructure as well.