Cameron Thompson (Blair, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

We will be saving lives, and that is a significant issue. According to the first Maunsell report, the carrying capacity of this road would meet the coming flow of traffic for 30 years—and that is if we just build a four-lane Goodna bypass. It is a great opportunity when you consider that the alternative, the state favoured upgrade, would last only five years. It would separate heavy trucks from local commuters by giving them a separate road to operate on. It provides network redundancy so that if there is a blockage on one route the other route can continue. There is no such network redundancy now. It would make Goodna a much better place to live because we are not going to have this great big traffic sewer running through the middle of it. It would create a new motorway type highway and also a new arterial road network for Ipswich, that being the existing motorway in a new guise because all the heavy trucks will be moved off it. There are also many other improvements which come with the option for a bypass.

The Goodna bypass will basically do for Ipswich what the M1 did for the Gold Coast. It will mean that the true potential for growth in our region can be realised. There is no other way to realise it. I have continued to fight for this right throughout, but state members and their fellow travellers in our region continue to obfuscate and continue to get in the way of it. They want us to do what the last upgrade involved and to produce the same outcome, which was practically nothing after years of blood, sweat and tears. I am proud to have been involved in the campaign to get the Goodna bypass up and running. I am out to do something good for Ipswich and the motorists who at the moment are absolutely frustrated with the current corridor. This is the only short-term, medium-term and long-term solution to their problems. Minimising the serious prospect of disruption during construction is the short-term issue. In the medium term is an immediate opportunity for relief, which would not come until much later with the upgrade process. Finally, in the long term is a horizon of 30 years versus five years under the other scenario.

I got on this bandwagon because years ago, in 2001, the state main roads department’s own engineer told me what a dog of a project the state government’s proposed upgrade would be. He told me that. He told me about the chaos that would follow and the lives that would be lost during construction and in traffic on that road because of the state’s determination for what they want to do. They are worried that when we build the Goodna bypass they will have to take responsibility for the existing motorway. It is saving lives versus some kind of financial impediment the state sees in this project—as opposed to the utopia of having the Commonwealth pay for everything. What are lives in Ipswich worth? Honestly! I listened to that engineer, and it is a pity that the state main roads department did not listen to him too; otherwise we would have started the Goodna bypass study back in 2001 and not at this late date.

By the end of this year Maunsell should have prepared everything we need to go to tender for the construction of the Goodna bypass, and the Commonwealth and the state government should be ready to recognise that and to proceed as quickly as possible. The state Labor government keep saying that it is wrong for politicians representing the needs of motorists to draw lines on a map to show where a needed road should go—nonsense. What they mean is that, because Labor do not have the guts to stand up for motorists and for Ipswich, no-one else should either. I say to Labor: stop making excuses, stop telling lies and get out of the way because the Goodna bypass is coming through.

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