Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have a Tasmanian colleague here shaking his head. After decades and decades of pork-barrelling, you know nothing of the suffering of the people of Bowman. Let me tell you what the state Labor member had to say when he was pressed about transport infrastructure by a facility whose CEO said, ‘We’re concerned that, when you four-lane this highway with either federal or state resources, it will be difficult for ambulances to enter or egress from this property.’ The response was simple. The MP said: ‘Don’t worry; the dual-laning of this road won’t happen for years. We will just upgrade the intersections to keep the whingers happy.’

What is driving transport infrastructure in my state of Queensland if that is the attitude of a sitting state member up for re-election and the sentiment held by a local member in my area who should be fighting hard for the infrastructure our community needs? It should not even require a debate to understand that you would need a dual-lane carriageway leading from communities the size of Victoria Point and Redland Bay. Is that too much to ask from colleagues on the other side who are focused so much on delivering netball courts and netball rings to their schools? As I have said, there is never a bad time for a netball court! But there has never been a better time for economic infrastructure than now, and it is not happening.

I do not like to bore those opposite with details about their own state government, but let me remind them of the $3 billion blow-out, year-on-year, for infrastructure projects. Let me remind you of the $2.4 billion budget blow-out for this year alone. This is a state government that was just as blind as our federal colleagues in identifying the recession that we were entering in 2009. Could we get any preparatory position from them on transport infrastructure? The answer is no. At the budget in 2008 it was just more Labor spending and no provisioning for the future. This government simply profited from and fed themselves profligately on the budget they inherited from the previous administration. That is nothing to be proud of. And if this government thought truly about this motion, it would realise that it really achieves nothing more than highlighting how little has been delivered by its state colleagues.

Let us remember that there is an interest component to all of this borrowing—and this is a lot of money. I often say to my constituents, ‘This is the figure of two followed by 11 zeros,’ to give them a sense of how far the federal government is going into debt. In Queensland—well, it is only $74 billion! And the interest on it is only $2.6 billion! Where is that sort of money—that interest payment—to be found when you are trying to run hospitals and schools? The answer is simple: ‘We will borrow that, too. We will borrow to make the interest payment.’ There is no provisioning for the future. And, when you think about how hard it was to pay off debt from 1996 to 2004, when we finally paid off the debt—

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