Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) | Hansard source

What I want to talk about is infrastructure and the great contribution that this government is making to the state of Queensland, especially with regard to roads. Just last weekend in Toowoomba, one of my favourite towns, we saw the opening of the Toowoomba bypass. The Toowoomba crossing is a $1.6 billion project that had 80 per cent of its funding from the federal government. We have also seen up to $635 million invested in the Warrego Highway. That's the highway I grew up on; that's my yellow brick road. So we have a number of new overtaking lanes coming in there. We also have the Chinchilla open level rail crossing upgrade, and we have $19 million being spent on that. We have the Oakey-Miles upgrade, and we have $43.5 million spent on that. We have $63.5 million spent on the Dalby to Miles pavement widening. We have the Oakey to Miles safety upgrade—another $11 million.

I'm going to go through the completed projects. We have the Dalby to Miles overtaking lanes, the Carroll Creek culvert replacement, the Brigalow to Chinchilla upgrade, the Dalby eastern access upgrade and the Dalby western access upgrade. What's interesting about this is that the federal government is putting money into the Darling Downs. This is the place the gas is coming out of. This is the place where the beautiful black soil creates the wealth. It creates all the wheat and barley and cotton that gets exported for dollars for this country. My question is: is the state Labor government putting money into those areas? I think not. What I have seen those guys do is shut down our maternity ward, amalgamate our councils and bring in poker machines. What a terrible legacy state Labor has left to our state.