Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I value this opportunity to speak about the Bruce Highway. It is Queensland's major north-south corridor. It connects the coastal population centres, one of them being your own, Madam Deputy Speaker Livermore, from Brisbane to Cairns over 1,677 kilometres. But let me commence my contribution by bringing something to the attention of the member for Moreton. The member for Moreton should not read the Labor Party rhetoric but go out and have a look at the Bruce Highway, on which he travelled so frequently.

He cited four sets of works. I know them all intimately. One site he referred to is Gin Gin, which is not even started. Who knows when it will be started? It is out there in the never-never. At the Calliope Crossroads some minor work is going on, a service station has been resumed, but no major works are going on. He also mentioned section B, the Cooroy to Curra section. He used another name, but I know exactly what he was referring to. That has been completed but not opened, and it is not likely to be opened until later in the year. So we have one out of four. Let me talk a little bit more about that further on.

The highway is on the National Land Transport Network and is a key freight route, providing the agricultural and resources industries access to the 11 coastal ports along the highway's length. It is also a major tourist route. The Australian Road Assessment Program national report released earlier this year highlighted that the Bruce Highway accounts for one-sixth of the fatalities on the national highway network. The average number of accidents involving fatality and serious injury on the Bruce Highway is 322 per year. Travel on the highway is regularly disrupted by flooding—33 significant sites along its length go under regularly. Flooding at 13 of these sites is considered to be a major problem.

The Australian government is funding, over a six-year period, a program which will see Queensland receive 24 per cent of the funding, New South Wales receive 32 per cent, Victoria receive 19 per cent and Western Australia receive 10 per cent. Under the MOI, the Bruce Highway will receive almost $2.7 billion in works. That is over six years, as the member for Moreton said. The minister—and, by inference, the member for Moreton—makes much of the fact that the current Labor government has spent more on the Bruce Highway than the former coalition government spent. There is nothing unusual about that. You could equally say that the Howard government spent more than the Keating government. But we live in an era in which progressive works have to take place, and inflation means that spending increases.

The Newman government has announced $1 billion over 10 years for the Bruce Highway. That should attract, in the normal course of events, $4 billion from the Commonwealth government. It will be interesting to see whether in the next budget the Gillard government responds to the Newman government, which it is very ready to criticise. We will see, when push comes to shove, whether they really are going to spend some serious money on the Bruce Highway. But even that money, plus whatever Labor puts in, will still not be enough to get the Bruce Highway up to a reasonable standard.

The member for Moreton and the minister tell us all about what they are going to spend on roads. But if you have a look at the budget, road funding fell 58 per cent. If you compare the current year of 2012-13 with the last year of the Howard government, 2007-08, road funding actually fell, from $2.87 billion under Howard to $2.67 billion under Gillard. Therein lies the deceit—the glossy forward promises but nondelivery. If they were fair dinkum about the Bruce Highway or, for that matter, any other national highway, they would have been putting some serious money into it. I repeat: it will be interesting to see whether they will increase their funding beyond that $2.6 billion when they have the opportunity to put $4 billion in to match Campbell Newman on the 20-80 formula.

There is another interesting point that the member for Moreton may not be aware of. We all know how important the Cooroy to Curra section is, but through a question asked of the Bligh government by my state colleague the member for Gympie—the significance of the question was obviously lost on the minister at the time—it was admitted in state parliament that Labor had actually taken $100 million away from the Cooroy to Curra section. What a disgrace it is to come in here and beat your chest about how good you are while out the back door you are snipping $100 million from one of the most vital sections of the Bruce Highway.

I see my colleague the member for Herbert in here. My colleagues—the members for Wide Bay, Flynn, Dawson, Herbert and Leichhardt—and I have formed a group that has recently had an outreach along the Bruce Highway. We visited all of these bad spots—not all of us at every spot, but on a continuum up the highway—and five of the six of us released a questionnaire to all our constituents to find out what they thought about it. We will be releasing some data that I think will put a whole new perspective on what has to happen on the Bruce Highway. We did not do it an any spirit of blaming Labor or seeing whether we had done enough. We decided that if this was going to be a 1,677-kilometre artery that keeps the East Coast of Australia alive through freight, tourism and inter-city exchange we needed to have a forthright program where we could identify things that need to be changed. It is quite obvious that the Cooroy to Curra section is one that does need to be changed.

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