Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

The motion before the parliament tonight talks about the government’s nation-building infrastructure policies for dealing with the global financial crisis. It especially notes the investment in outer metropolitan transport. I have to report to you tonight that I am extraordinarily disappointed with the performance—or, in fact, the non-performance—of the Bligh Labor government in Queensland. My Labor colleagues opposite will also be extraordinarily disappointed.

The Australian government has provided money for infrastructure development, and well it might. But the Bligh government is blocking the expenditure of that money. Let me tell you about the Douglas arterial road in Townsville. The Douglas Arterial Road was North Queensland’s first motorway. After an enormous fight with the state government I was able to get that built but it is built to two-lane standard. It has been so successful as a bypass, with a benefit-cost ratio of nearly 13 to one, that it has reached a situation where it is carrying more traffic than it can. It needs to be four lanes.

So, at the last election both the then opposition and I promised that we would make the Douglas Arterial Road four lanes. Fifty-five million dollars was announced by the current Australian government as its contribution to the four-laning of that most significant road in Townsville, but it needed a state contribution. And what has the state government done? The state government has done zero—nothing. It will not commit; it will not provide any state funding. So the project will not proceed. Here we have a national infrastructure building project funded under that program that cannot proceed because of the Labor state government in Queensland. How wrong is that? We all want to sustain jobs. We want to build a road for our community.

The Douglas arterial connects the Lavarack Barracks, the Townsville Hospital and the university to the northern beaches. But we cannot four-lane it. It also connects with the new Townsville Ring Road, which will be opened in the next few weeks. The Townsville Ring Road is a logical extension from the south through to the north to the Bruce Highway—another high-speed motorway, but there is no four-laning. That is wrong, and our community will mark down the Bligh Labor government for the utter contempt that they have shown us. I think the Australian federal government will mark down the Bligh Labor government, because we want to get on with these infrastructure building projects. We want them to happen.

And why won’t the Bligh Labor government provide its share for the construction of this new highway? They are now $74 billion in debt. I worry about that; I worry in the sense that it took the former Australian government 10 years to pay off $96 billion of Labor debt—10 years—with the resources of the Commonwealth. With Queensland $74 billion in debt and with only the resources of the state, I put it to you that I do not think Queensland will ever pay off its debt. What an extraordinary position to find ourselves in: we cannot pay off the debt of the state because Labor has borrowed too much. And you all know what has happened with Queensland’s credit rating; it has been downgraded. The government itself cannot borrow any more money. It is just an amazing situation. I call on the Bligh Labor government in Queensland to immediately address its responsibilities and to get this—

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