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

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to debunk a lot of the nonsense that has just come from the opposition spokesman. We have had quite a long and very deep debate over the Ipswich Motorway issue in south-east Queensland. In November 2001, the Kellogg Brown and Root report into the state government’s plan to upgrade the Ipswich Motorway made the following finding. They said it was impossible, impractical and even undesirable to try and upgrade the upgrade plan, as was being proposed then by the state government and still—what, six years down the track?—is being proposed by members opposite. It was impractical, impossible, for them to upgrade that plan to the point where it could actually deal with the traffic according to national highway standards at its completion. That is what Kellogg Brown and Root said about the upgrade project in November 2001. Furthermore, they said that they would therefore need to seek the permission of the federal minister to accept standards that were below the national highway standards and to be prepared to foist upon people in the western corridor of Brisbane a lower than acceptable national highway standard for the handling of what is now 100,000 vehicles a day on the motorway. It is just incredible.

At that time, that was the full extent of the upgrade plan, yet members opposite, six years down the track, after there has been an even greater blow-out in the amount of traffic, are still trying to tell local people in the Ipswich area that it will be sufficient merely to add two lanes to the existing motorway. We heard the member opposite, the opposition spokesman, saying that there would be this mysterious network of local—what did he say?—

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