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

I stand today to defend the opposition leader and the shadow Treasurer, for they are not the only ones who don't know how to read a budget. It is a deficiency they share with the Queensland Labor government. Earlier this week, we announced $1.6 billion towards a $3.2 billion rail project between Beerwah and Maroochydore. Ever since, the Queensland minister, Mark Bailey, has worked himself into a lather—TV, radio, even social media—claiming that the business case from which that number was derived plus a contingency in fact had that project listed at $5.3 billion. That didn't sound right to me, so I thought I better check. He is, after all, the state transport minister, so I checked it out. Guess what? He got it wrong. He misread the business case and he misread the budget, which is just hilarious when you think about the role he is in. He actually looked at the business case, an enormous rolling project from the Sunshine Coast to Brisbane for $5.3 billion dollars, completely missing the point. So I take my hat off to the entire Labor Party at state and federal levels. All of them are economically illiterate. (Time expired)