Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is always a pleasure to stand in this place and speak about infrastructure, because infrastructure provides the lifeblood to our economy for it to operate and grow. My question will be to the Deputy Prime Minister, but I would like to make a few comments before I get to that.

It is pleasing to see in this budget a record spend on infrastructure for this nation—some $50 billion. Equally, to bring this more locally to my electorate of Forde, I am pleased to see that there is some $13 million of Roads to Recovery funding between the Logan and Gold Coast city councils. I represent an area that covers parts of both of those councils, which are growing rapidly with satellite cities and infill development, and it is critically important that these councils are provided that funding so that they can continue to upgrade the local road networks for the businesspeople of our community, whom we touched on in an earlier session. As we fund and grow the ability of small business to grow and develop, we see—we are already seeing anecdotally—increases in purchases of new utes and all sorts of other equipment as a result of the instant asset write-off provisions that we introduced in the budget on budget night. All of those tradespeople and businesspeople who are buying the equipment can as a result of our budget changes in the small business sector. They need the roads and infrastructure to be able to productively grow their business. The last thing they need is to be sitting in traffic at six o'clock in the morning or even during the day, trying to get from one job to another.

Certainly in my electorate there is a high number of self-employed small business people who are tradespeople, electricians, plumbers and carpenters. They are frequently travelling the roads of our great cities, and these infrastructure investments will be greatly appreciated—none more so than exit 54 at Upper Coomera. In thanking the Deputy Prime Minister, I would also like to thank the assistant minister for visiting the electorate 12 months or so ago and hosting a meeting with interested stakeholders. Interestingly, it was the first time all the stakeholders had been in the one room at the one time to discuss this vital project for Upper Coomera.

I would like to thank the assistant minister and the Deputy Prime Minister for being able to work with them to secure $10 million of funding for the upgrade of this vital interchange at Upper Coomera. It will lead to an increase in jobs as a result of the capacity of Westfield and QIC to build the Coomera Town Centre, which will be a tremendous boon to the local economy in creating jobs and building activity. We have a small industrial area in Upper Coomera which houses a lot of small to medium businesses. One of the things they have spoken frequently to me about is the amount of time they have to sit at roundabouts to get from one side of the highway to the other. They are no longer coping with the traffic volumes as a result of the development in Upper Coomera.

Not only will that initiative lead to new jobs and new development, but it will also increase productivity and more profitable businesses as they service other areas of the greater Gold Coast or areas where they do business. I am very proud of the fact that we as a government recognise the importance of infrastructure and creating the opportunities for our business sector to grow. Parents who have to get kids to and from school in that local area—we have five schools very close together—frequently get frustrated at the amount of time they have to spend sitting in traffic jams.

My question to the Deputy Prime Minister is: could he please outline how continuing to build infrastructure in Australia is going to benefit, not only the broader national economy, but also our local economies in and around electorates such as Forde?

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