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

service roads to support the motorway. I can tell you the names of those service roads. In the section through Goodna, it is Smiths Road and it is Brisbane Terrace. Those are existing roads. It is not a new service network; there ain’t no new service network there. They are saying, ‘We’re going to add just two additional lanes on the existing motorway, and we’re going to co-opt Brisbane Terrace and Smiths Road, and they will be our service roads.’ So to all the poor people who rely on those roads for their current service today: ‘Sorry, no, it’s a service road.’ That is the total extent of the Labor Party planning and contribution to what is one of the most important corridors—the growth corridor, according to the state government. There they are directing growth into this corridor, saying, ‘Grow, you corridor,’ and saying that, for people in Ipswich, where the population is going to treble in the next 18 years, it is just sufficient to add two measly lanes and, not only that, to dig up the road for 5½ years to do it.

I heard the opposition spokesman saying that he came up with some figure of three years. That is nonsense. Maunsells, the well-reputed engineers, produced a study of the upgrade plan. They said, ‘Sorry, guys, you’re going to need another 18 months of planning if you want to do the upgrade work, and you’re going to need another four years of construction.’

That is exactly the same time frame within which the coalition government can provide six lanes on a whole new route. So we are more than doubling capacity into the corridor in a region where the population is going to more than treble. What are they adding? They are not even adding another 50 per cent to the existing equation. They are taking away people’s local streets in order to provide what they call ‘service roads’. For the local people in that area, this has got to be the greatest con job ever.

The concept that I think the spokesman opposite was putting was that—when this was going to occur—they said that they had proposed this as their policy in 1998. If the Labor Party put it forward as their policy in 1998, that was four years after Laurie Brereton and David Hamill opened what they said would be a road that would last for 20 years. That is the short-changing; that is the inadequacy; that is the snake oil that members opposite stand for when they talk about development in the Ipswich Motorway corridor. Bandaid after bandaid after bandaid, and no relief for anyone. Five and a half years of digging up the Ipswich Motorway is their recipe for an outcome which could not meet the traffic on the day it was delivered—and that is according to a forecast that is already six years old. There is an awful lot that the coalition government is prepared to do, and I note that— (Time expired)

See this speech in context