Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have a quite an audience here today, but I think they will soon move out of the chamber as their leader has spoken. The Leader of the Opposition gave a very impassioned speech. His support for truckies is well placed. Unfortunately, I do not believe the Leader of the Opposition really understands a lot about the trucking industry from one trip from Melbourne to Dubbo on what are probably some of the better roads in the country.

I will talk a little on the AusLink (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2008 and its effect on my electorate of Forde in South-East Queensland. Travelling in the electorate of Forde is very different from the description that the Leader of the Liberal Party gave of his horrendous trip. That trip would have been sheer luxury. It does not happen that way in my electorate. If you want to take a trip from Brisbane across the border to Kyogle, you will not find truck stops or facilities. In fact, with the single tarmac and the potholes, it is quite a horrendous trip. I think the point of the legislation was missed in that impassioned speech. The legislation is about safety, safety and safety. Of course, productivity measures will be put in place to ensure safe outcomes for our drivers. The trucking industry and particularly its drivers, who do those trips day after day, week after week, is what this legislation is about.

Before I talk more about how the funds that will be appropriated through this legislation will support the electorate of Forde, I want to make a couple of points about the legislation itself. The bill strengthens road safety and proves the government’s commitment to improving local roads, particularly for heavy vehicles. The definition of a road will be amended so as to put beyond any doubt that projects for the development of facilities used by heavy vehicles in connection with travel on road may be funded.

The Leader of the Nationals spoke earlier this morning about his concerns with this bill. I want to debunk some of the fears and concerns that he raised. In a former life, on one occasion I had the responsibility to listen to a number of representations from people within his electorate—people from the trucking industry—who wanted better roads and more funding for their roads. There seems to be a lack of connection between what funding raised through the levies or other charges may mean in terms of supporting productivity. If you are going to save costs in this industry, if you are going to make it better, you are going to prevent accidents and other events and you are also going to make the industry more productive. Any charges that may go toward improving productivity essentially mean that you will lower costs overall. That is what this legislation is about. The Liberal leader talked about listening to Slim Dusty. Lights on the Hill is a song that I remember well. It is about the trucking industry. It is a hard road; it is tough. I wonder whether he listened to the words of those songs, which talk about the grief, the heartache, the rattled kidneys and all of the other problems that people suffer from as a result of bad roads.

We as a government want to invest in roads. Look at the last 12 years. Where have those on the other side been? Where is their investment? I do recognise the fact that AusLink, the funds towards Roads to Recovery and the blackspots funding have all gone to helping the cause, but the reality is that our road transport network is in a shambles. I again point to the fact that the Hume Highway—or any connection of roads from Victoria to New South Wales—is a wonderful road compared with what we have in Queensland. I mentioned my electorate of Forde in South-East Queensland and the importance of alternative road and freight transport routes.

It is interesting to see that a number of Gold Coast members—the members for Moncrieff and McPherson, and I think the member for Fadden was in the crowd here somewhere today—have been essentially talking about upgrades to the M1. They have been talking about safety and expansion of that network, and yet in one fell swoop they can say, ‘We don’t need any more money to do it, so lay off the trucking industry.’ As I said earlier, it is productivity that will bring costs down. Look at the issues in the Senate right now. There is the blocking of $550 million from a luxury car tax, just to allow people to buy Mercedes-Benzes, Porsches and Rolls Royces—$550 million that would otherwise come into the budget. I fear that that is the first instalment of a $6.2 billion hole that they will blow in the budget by blocking some of this legislation. They stand here and talk about safety, about supporting the industry and about the concerns that the industry has. There is no mention of productivity and the fact that they are prepared to give more money and yet take it from everyone else through those blockages in the Senate. That is the issue for me today.

I might talk a little bit more about the electorate of Forde. It is in South-East Queensland. It is in the Gold Coast hinterland—in fact, it sits inland from those three federal seats on the coast that I spoke about. Yes, congestion is heavy in that particular corridor—in fact, it is overcongested. It is the major and almost the only road and freight network to the south. The electorate of Forde is somewhat inland. It has road corridors but they are certainly underfunded. The former member for Forde, my predecessor—who was a member of the Liberal Party—was frustrated by the lack of funding to that region. It is important for me today to speak up about the requirement to get more dollars into the system to support the safety features that are in this particular bill.

This $70 million package is essentially a way of attacking the causes of fatal truck accidents. It is all about ensuring and funding the establishment of the road safety action plans and understanding the nature and the scope of the lack of road safety for the trucking industry. The Royal Automobile Club of Queensland, the RACQ, as part of the wider road users network, has put together information about road safety and the number of fatalities in South-East Queensland and on the Mount Lindesay Highway. While trucks probably represent only about two per cent of the traffic load in that region, they are involved in upwards of 30 per cent of the road accidents and fatalities. That is not the drivers’ fault. I think it is quite concerning that the Leader of the Opposition would suggest that the drivers are to blame, through lack of facilities or whether or not they can or cannot get two-inch-thick rissoles. I think again that he has missed the point—that this really is about providing facilities where people can get appropriate breaks. Okay, if the logbooks are part of the process, we understand that that is a regulation that is all about ensuring safety.

One of the major concerns for my electorate of Forde is the Mount Lindesay Highway. It is otherwise known as ‘the goat track’, yet it is a major transport corridor not only for freight movement but also for tourism and for the residents who live within the electorate. I want to talk about areas to the south of my electorate, on the beautiful border ranges, such as Mount Tamborine and Canungra. I have been known to sing the praises of Canungra in this parliament. The reality is that it is a significant area that has significant tourism potential. While this bill is essentially about freight and about safety for trucking movements, it is all related. The accidents that occur with general transport are all about the overall design of the road. While figures show that there has been a large number of trucking accidents in my region, it comes down to poor road design. I think that 60 per cent of the concerns are not necessarily related to drivers or to their wellbeing. So it is a case of making sure that through this bill we can provide those extra services.

I keep talking about the region of Forde. Realising the tourism potential of this region is essential for its growth. While tourism in the first instance opens up a lot of these road corridors, there is an alternative route. I spoke about the Gold Coast being very much the narrow connection between Queensland and New South Wales. We have untold opportunities to open up some inland routes. On a number of occasions I have spoken in this House about ‘the great south-west’, a concept being put forward by a number of local government authorities, the state government and me as the federal member. That route goes across the border and has gained support from the members for Page and Richmond, who also understand the importance of opening up other north-south corridors through the region from Forde, across the border ranges into Kyogle and further south. In fact, the whole great south-west conceptualises the opportunity to grow that region. But regional growth also means transport routes. It means safety and it means the productivity that can come with that.

I know the opposition always like to beat up the state governments, but essentially in Queensland there has been a major infrastructure investment. While some federal government funding is required, that infrastructure investment has largely been on the basis of what the state government has been able to envisage for the region. In my own electorate is the area of Bromelton, which people in this House and across Australia will hear a lot more about in the next few years. Bromelton, as an inland port, will be the site of the largest industrial area to be created and will include soft industries and transport logistics. The area of Bromelton is key to this particular area of the great south-west that we talk about. It is the hub of that development. But, currently, if you look at that region, the access roads and the corridors are very poor—in fact, in some cases they do not exist. On the one hand we have the demand and the growth in that region and on the other hand we do not have the facilities or the resources—or, dare I say, the safe transport or freight networks—that should be in place to allow this area to grow.

That is on the commercial side, and a great economic boost. But I mentioned earlier the growth of tourism. Just to put that in perspective: we have a lot of mountainous areas, simply because we have the Border Ranges region. There are concerns that people are trying to move freight through those regions on roads that were not designed for that. Yet, going back many years, there was an understanding by the community fathers of the time that they needed to open up those regions and to make better provision even just for safe transport for the people who lived in the region. I could talk about Mount Tamborine, as an example, and the inadequate road system that feeds that mountain. In the areas of Canungra, Camp Cable, Beaudesert, and Kyogle, across the border, the road network is very poor.

Let us look at the history of the region. Many people in this House would be aware of the famous Stinson air wreck, when that plane hit a mountain in the Border Ranges back in 1937. That is an area of major interest to our region. Lots of people visit the region to go to the Lamington National Park, and to visit sites—where they can—that are very historic. As I have said previously in this House, the historical areas of my electorate include Beaudesert, which was where, during the Second World War, the 2nd/14th Light Horse Regiment was mobilised. Not far from there, we have Canungra, or the Kokoda Barracks, which are still part of the Land Warfare Training Centre. We have Camp Tabragalba, which was an area of training for the ‘Z’ force for the invasion of Singapore. Camp Cable housed 20,000 American troops during the Second World War. Yet these areas are essentially lost in time. We have no memorials, and I have talked in this House on another occasion about the need for military memorials, for national recognition of these sites. Essentially, what I am saying is that this region has huge significance historically, as well as for tourism and ecotourism. People want to come into the region to have a look at what went before. Unfortunately, however, the road network just does not support that.

As I said previously, early in the last century there were moves to create roads and thoroughfares into that region. There were some, in fact, by the O’Reilly family—and people will know of O’Reilly’s guesthouse, which is also closely related to the wreck of the Stinson. Bernard O’Reilly, a dairy farmer in that region in 1937, was aware that a Stinson plane had gone missing and, after eight days, decided that no-one else was able enough to go and find where the plane’s wreckage was. He traversed the bush and found the wreckage. There were national and international headlines about this passenger plane that had gone down in the Border Ranges.

Yet the roads that supply that area and support tourism in that area are winding and dangerous. In fact, back in the late 1970s it was decided that a road would be built from the Lamington Plateau, down the side of the mountain, to service the Beaudesert region, both ways. I have mentioned the Stinson wreck of 1937, and it is interesting that this road came about as part of the efforts of people to move into that region to rescue those people who were marooned on the mountain, lost, for eight days. After 10 days they were found and finally brought off the mountain in different ways. But Duck Creek and the Duck Creek Road, as it is now known, came into being then.

In late 1978 there was a decision by the Beaudesert Chamber of Commerce, of which I later became the president, to build and create a road that would service the tourism aspects of O’Reilly’s guesthouse. I talk about that today because it is so important that this major tourist attraction, which employs about 130 people and turns over a large amount of revenue for the region, is unsupported by the local road network. In fact, major employment comes to that area from the town of Beaudesert. To go straight up the Duck Creek Road, which I have just mentioned, would take someone coming from Beaudesert less than half an hour. But if they were to go by the only route that would ensure that they got there safely, it would take about an hour and a half. So the Duck Creek Road is essential to servicing that area. It is unpaved. While that is not an issue, and people do not necessarily expect it to be paved, the local authorities have said that the Roads to Recovery funding is very important for projects that can continue to support the economic growth and development of the region. Duck Creek Road was inspired by the O’Reilly family—Bernard O’Reilly, who I have spoken of, and Herb O’Reilly, who had sat on the mountain and dreamed that it would be wonderful for people to be able to traverse the mountain by going up this Duck Creek Road. That is essentially the history of this road. This road, which was built from private funds, essentially, and initially through private land, has since been gazetted. Unfortunately, since its gazettal—and while there have been donations made towards that road; while it raises about $6,000 or $7,000 a year in donations—it has taken about $60,000 a year to maintain the road, simply because the road is badly designed. The new mayor of the Scenic Rim Regional Council, John Brent, said to me only last week—as have a number of local council members—that Roads to Recovery funding and Black Spot Program funding is essential to regions like the Scenic Rim region and the Beaudesert region. He has implored me on many occasions to ensure that we, as a government, continue the funding.

Getting to the point of my discussion today: the funding that we can raise through the continuation of AusLink and AusLink II is about productivity, road safety and ensuring that we have safe routes for people to traverse.

See this speech in context