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

The member for Fisher raises a question that is difficult to answer in the sense that the only suspicion you have got, apart from the generic mismanagement and misprioritisation of the expenditure of the record amounts of money the state government in Queensland are getting, is that their first priority is very simple—that is, to build a big bureaucracy filled with card-carrying members of the Australian Labor Party and pay them lots of money. So we find $1 out of every $4 that goes from the Australian government to the Queensland government for things like education goes to the bureaucracy, first and foremost.

So my suspicion is that a failure to invest in infrastructure is because their priority is about paying a small number of people a lot of money instead of fixing up the services that need to be maintained. You would think that the state of Queensland would see investment in the basics like roads, rail, water and power—to make a trip to Queensland a fantastic experience, without any of the restrictions that are about to be applied to tourists—as a priority for the Queensland government.

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