George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The economic engine rooms of the coal industry in North and Central Queensland and the iron ore industry in the west, which carried this nation through the global financial crisis, have been reduced to an idle by plummeting resources prices. The Liberal-National government committed billions of dollars into important infrastructure projects throughout North Queensland to create jobs needed to survive this part of the cycle. Two key projects are the Mackay Ring Road and the Haughton River Bridge upgrade, with a combined value of over a billion dollars. The Liberal-National government committed around half a billion dollars to each of these projects as part of the $6.7 billion commitment to fix the Bruce Highway.

The Prime Minister has previously agreed to fast-track the funding, but putting money into the engine room means nothing if the state government has the handbrake on. Contracts for detailed design and planning of the Mackay Ring Road were awarded more than a year ago, but the Queensland Labor government is now saying that construction will not start for another year or more. The Premier's announcement in Townsville last month about fast-tracking projects, including projects on the Bruce Highway, has been an absolute fizzer. She claimed that overtaking lanes at Thomsetts Road were part of her fast-tracking program, but that project is 100 per cent federally funded, and construction went to tender in November last year, so it is not even fast-tracked. The Mackay Ring Road, which will create 600 badly needed jobs in the Mackay region, did not even rate a mention. To rub salt in the wounds, Queensland Labor committed to spend $29.7 million building more public housing in Mackay, when thousands of homes are already sitting vacant because thousands of jobless families have left town.

What worries me even more is some of Labor's language around its infrastructure in the north. The Premier's infrastructure plan, announced in the media on the weekend, spends a lot of time talking about value capture and alternative funding—things such as improving capability to apply value capture to infrastructure project development and delivery. This echoes similar thought bubbles from Labor's federal leader, the member for Maribyrnong, and it also smells a lot like the Bruce Highway being turned into a series of toll roads and toll bridges. When the opposition leader here was asked about his plan to build the Bruce Highway with private sector money, his response was this:

So you used a reference to tolls. That would be part of what Infrastructure Australia would work out, not one size fits all, but I've got no doubt that as we build new physical assets, which create value over time, there will be a return for private sector investors…

North Queenslanders know that what we need is not toll roads, but the 600 jobs that fast-tracking the Mackay Ring Road would bring. That is why residents are signing my petition calling on the Premier to pull the finger out and get out of the way of new jobs in North Queensland.

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