Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Service Economy, Small Business and Independent Contractors) Share this | Hansard source

Well, ‘some mothers do ’ave ’em’. On the day that the member for Moreton brings forward this private member’s motion for debate, we have banner headlines on the front page of the Courier-Mail quoting the Liberal state leader saying, ‘I don’t care.’ And what didn’t he care about? He was asked yesterday if he was worried that his continued opposition to the bypass proposal being advocated by the member for Moreton would be perceived as disloyalty to the Prime Minister. In response, Dr Flegg said, ‘I don’t care.’ He went on to say:

My position has been strong and clear before the feds adopted any position about this matter ... I think my party room and my party would expect I would honour my commitment.

The member for Moreton said in his piece that he sought Labor Party support for the plan. The Labor Party has been supporting for years the upgrading of the Ipswich Motorway, as the member for Batman said, in 1998, in 2001, in 2004 and now in 2007.

But when it comes to the Queensland Liberal Party it is a case of every man for himself and God help the women and children. They are at each other’s throats over this. This is the blame game writ large, but on this occasion the Liberals are blaming each other. Let me tell you about the Lord Mayor of Brisbane. He said:

It is very clear to the people who live in the western suburbs of Brisbane that this will be the precursor to a western Brisbane bypass ... There are alignments on maps now which show where that route would go.

This new Goodna bypass announced today will permit a road to go up through the back of Moggill, Bellbowrie, Pullenvale, Brookfield, The Gap, Brisbane Forest Park and into Samford Valley.

The Lord Mayor of Brisbane condemns this proposal of the Howard government in the strongest possible terms. He went on to say, in another article:

My impression is there has never been a proper comparison of the options and I can’t understand why there hasn’t been, especially if you have the state government, the state opposition and the Lord Mayor all backing an upgrade and it’s an option that costs less.

Hear, hear to the Lord Mayor of Brisbane. But where oh where is the member for Ryan in all of this? The same article says:

... across the river in the safer electorate of Ryan, where traffic flows will increase, Michael Johnson—not known as a prime ministerial favourite—is battling a backlash. “I’m bitterly disappointed,” he said. “I’m in the process of writing to my constituents explaining that.”

So the blame game is the Liberals blaming each other. We have got the member for Moreton and the member for Blair advocating the Goodna bypass, which is absolutely, totally and vehemently opposed by the Lord Mayor of Brisbane and by the Liberal leader, the Queensland opposition leader, who says ‘I don’t care’ when people ask him, ‘What if you are seen to be disloyal?’ because he knows that the Labor proposal is the right proposal.

I am tempted to move that so much of standing and sessional orders be suspended as would allow the member for Ryan—the missing Liberal—to come into this parliament and participate in the debate. Where is the member for Ryan? He is opposed to the views and the proposal of the member for Moreton and the member for Blair.

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