Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to report to the House that some 221,000 heavy interstate vehicles which would have passed through the federal electorate of Moreton along the Brisbane urban corridor—Riawena Road and Kessels Road and on to Mount Gravatt Capalaba Road through the electorate of Bonner—have over the last year or two actually travelled on the southern Brisbane bypass. The reason for that is simple: I talked to the Prime Minister a couple of years ago and urged the Commonwealth to fund a trial for paying the toll of these heavy interstate trucks at night. So far, some $1.73 million has been spent, paying money to the Queensland government’s coffers to offset the cost of the toll of $6 per truck that would have passed along this particular road corridor. So that is 221,000 fewer trucks on local roads, 221,000 more trucks using a purpose-built road which the Queensland government put a toll on.

If you want to talk about global warming the alternative would have been going up seven high hills and through 14 sets of traffic lights, stopping and starting and spewing out more diesel particulates over my local constituency. The urgency now is to make certain that what we now have as a way forward is a trial that is operating 24 hours a day. If it is just $1.73 million and it has put 221,000 trucks off the road since 2005, let us have a look at how much money is going to be involved in putting them off the road during the daylight hours as well, not just simply between 10 at night and five in the morning.

The only trouble is that every time we raise this matter with the Queensland government they want to extend the price. Some of the estimates in the early days of this discussion to buy out the toll for trucks and cars on that road—the southern Brisbane bypass—were about $10 million or $14 million. When the Queensland government heard we were interested, the price doubled. Now some of the estimates the Queensland authorities are putting to the Australian government authorities run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

This is disgraceful price gouging by a Queensland government that have no plans for infrastructure and no intention of implementing any of those that they have tried to announce and reannounce. If they had progress on actually building projects as fast as the progress on issuing press releases, Queensland would not be having the problems it has. The entire south-east corner of Queensland now has, per capita, the most congested roads in Australia—and the congestion is growing. Sydney is bad but Brisbane is worse on a per capita basis. The bottom line is this: we as an Australian government are ready to work with the Queensland government if they will only get fair dinkum and give us an honest price assessment, instead of trying to rip us off by increasing prices and not building any of the infrastructure they have already received funds for. The trial at night has worked—$1.73 million, 221,000 trucks off the roads. Let us do more. (Time expired)

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