Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Most of us in this place are familiar with the opportunism of the Labor Party and their willingness to do and say anything if they think there is a vote in it, particularly in an election year. These antics were on display again last week in my electorate of Leichhardt when the member for Lilley was in town making all sorts of promises about flood-proofing the Bruce Highway. I suggest that the closest the member for Lilley has come to the Bruce Highway is on the approach into Cairns, when he is looking out of the window of the aircraft as he flies into our city for the day. In any case, the member for Lilley promised to jointly fund, with the state government, a multimillion dollar upgrade of the flood-prone Bruce Highway between Cairns and Townsville.

So the member for Lilley is going to pick up the phone and contact the minister for main roads, Mr Lucas, in a new-found spirit of goodwill and cooperation between the states and the Commonwealth, and he is going to agree to jointly fund the multimillion dollar project to upgrade our national highway. It really sounds too good to be true. And, of course, it is too good to be true. Perhaps the member for Lilley knows something that we do not, because it was only a couple of days before his visit that the Queensland transport minister, Paul Lucas, stated quite clearly in my local paper, the Cairns Post:

The Queensland government doesn’t pay the bills on the Bruce Highway, it is the Federal Government who decides what to build, when to build it and to what standard—

that is, the federal government is responsible for federal highways. From what I can understand, that is fact. I am surprised that the member for Lilley, given his new-found interest in these sorts of issues, is not aware of the fundamentals.

However, it is not only the member for Lilley who is becoming confused. We know that the Queensland transport minister also has a tendency toward political opportunism and sending mixed messages when it comes to the Bruce Highway. Only a fortnight ago he was boldly proclaiming on the front page of our local paper, the Cairns Post, that the bridges across the Mulgrave River near Gordonvale and the Seymour River north of Ingham would be fast-tracked, and work could start as early as December. That is great news. But the contradiction did not end there. Later, in the same article, on 14 February, a state government spokesman was quoted as saying that, if the federal money is received for the Mulgrave River bridge, construction could start before the end of the year. A financial request to the federal government would be prepared, according to the spokesman.

When? It was not last week. It has not been this month. It will not be next month. It will not be before the federal budget. Apparently, a financial request will be presented to the federal government in June. The transport minister released the plans in the local paper in February—he got a front-page story on it—but he is not going to bother letting the federal government know what he has in mind and what the costs associated with this project are going to be before June. It begs the question: is this the behaviour of a government that is genuinely committed to getting a good result for the people of Far North Queensland? The reality is that the Queensland transport minister is having difficulty spending the money he already has to upgrade the Bruce Highway.

The problem for the member for Lilley is that he is three years too late in his commitment. This government made a commitment in 2004 to move towards upgrading the flood-prone section of the Bruce Highway. Initially, we had to quarantine some $80 million from the AusLink funding to kick-start the most problematic section, which was the crossing of the Tully River flood plain. On quarantining that money, we were informed that this particular section was considered a low priority by the state Labor government and, consequently, not even a basic level of planning had been done. We then had to commit another $1.5 million to fast-track the planning and the design of this project.

Then, in a genuine endeavour to get the job done, an additional $60 million was committed to the Tully flood eradication project in the 2006 budget, even though the state government to this day has not finalised planning works and costings—and I suspect that the cost will continue to grow. Also, because of the flood impact of Cyclone Larry, an extra injection of $220 million was committed in the 2006 budget to address other flooding flashpoints between Townsville and Cairns. Again, this was done without any plans or costings by the state government. So, to date, the Australian government has deposited a total of $348 million into the Queensland government’s bank account, where I understand it is still sitting earning interest because the money, or the majority of it, is yet to be spent.

Little did the Treasurer know when he signed off on this commitment in the federal budget last May that, almost one year later, all we would have to show for our investment would be a new set of traffic lights in Innisfail and some relatively minor remedial work at Mirriwinni and at Goondi Bend near Innisfail. With all due respect, I am not sure what a set of traffic lights is going to do to alleviate flooding on the Bruce Highway. Advice from the Queensland Department of Main Roads is that construction of the flooding improvements across the Tully and the Murray River flood plain is due to start in about April and, it is hoped, will be finished by the end of 2009.

The ability to speed up these works rests solely with the Queensland government. The Queensland government manages this project on behalf of the Australian government. So this is not a case of buck-passing, but is the reality of roads administration in Australia. If the Queensland government feels it is not up to the job, it should refund the money and let us find somebody else who is. The new Liberal candidate for Leichardt, Charlie McKillop, came up with a great idea recently, I thought. She noted that there are five local authorities affected by this section of the highway and, between them, she is confident that they would have the wherewithal to manage this project and to put it out via a competitive tender process.

If the Queensland government wanted the job, RoadTek, which is their road building operation, could bid for the contract and demonstrate how it would meet certain performance criteria, including clear time frames and budgets. I think that idea has a lot of merit in it and is something that we really need to investigate in the future, given the outstanding success that we see in our Roads to Recovery program, in which councils have certainly demonstrated their ability to not only build roads but build them in a timely manner, of a very high quality and, of course, well and truly to budget. We have seen that more recently in Investing in Our Schools, so I think this is something that needs to be considered.

The Bruce Highway is the last section of our national highway to be cut annually by flooding, and Cairns is the only regional city of more than 130,000 residents to be isolated by floodwaters on an average of eight days a year. For example, we had rain earlier this month and within 24 hours the highway was again cut near Townsville. The money is sitting in the bank and the money needs to be spent. If there are plans for future works, they should be handed over to the Commonwealth immediately for consideration, not bandied around in the local papers in an effort to generate some front-page news for the state Minister for Transport and Main Roads and then handed over some months later to the federal government for costing.

It is time to end these games. The people of Far North Queensland deserve better than the deception and cheap political point-scoring of the Labor state government—on this occasion, aided and abetted by the member for Lilley, who sees himself as the next Treasurer in a federal Labor government but in actual fact highlights his total lack of understanding and interest in serious regional issues and demonstrates why he should never be allowed to get his hands on Australia’s one trillion dollar economy. We also need additional funding for the Peninsula Development Road, which runs from Cairns through Cape York, and I hope the state government will provide the information to allow us to access that as soon as possible.

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