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

Mr Speaker, I would firstly like to take the opportunity to congratulate you on your re-election to your office. It has been two months since the federal election and since Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced a $215 million investment in upgrading Queensland's M1 Pacific Motorway through Logan and the Gold Coast. In that time the Queensland Labor government has refused to come to the party with their share of funding; instead, they have finger-pointed, blame-shifted and offered nothing but political games through a media campaign that has done nothing to fix the M1.

The M1 is under pressure and urgently needs that extra capacity. While commuters are sitting in daily congestion for hours on end, frustrated and at the end of their tethers, the Queensland Minister for Main Roads, Road Safety and Ports, Mark Bailey, sits on his hands and continues to make excuses. The problem is that Mr Bailey is deceiving Queenslanders. He is misleading them about the funding principles, while demanding a bigger slice of the pie. Well, I have news for Mr Bailey: the Australian government is not a piggy bank. You cannot just ask mum and dad to double your pocket money because you spent it all on sweets.

Mr Bailey's funding shortcomings are a product of his Labor government's disastrous mismanagement. Queensland Labor has splashed all of their cash on sweeteners and a bloated public service and left nothing for vital infrastructure that will get Queensland moving. A report released this week by RPS Group, which analyses ABS data, shows public sector spending on infrastructure in the March quarter was at its lowest level since 2006 and half the rate of expenditure seen five years ago. Queensland's public spending on infrastructure is at a 10-year low, and future generations will suffer for it. Queensland Labor's long list of excuses is wearing thin, and my electorate of Forde is not falling for it. While Mr Bailey and members of his M1 delegation continue to split hairs over road classifications, it makes no difference to the facts. The fact is that the Queensland government has a 50-50 funding agreement with the Australian government for the M1 in South East Queensland, a road that transports primarily urban commuter traffic.

Since the M1 was constructed in Queensland, the funding of all upgrades has been on a 50-50 basis. My colleague and Minister for Urban Infrastructure the Hon. Paul Fletcher put it well in an opinion piece recently, when he said:

Mark [Bailey] has not been able to point to any document which lays out such a principle [for 80-20 funding] … the facts about road funding over the last decade or more make it clear that the funding basis varies from project to project.

The fact is that the Turnbull government has taken two of the biggest items on Queensland's infrastructure wish list and moved them from the one-day column to the ready-to-go column. All Mr Bailey and the Palaszczuk government have to do is find their $215 million—a small sum in comparison to their multibillion dollar public service bill—and these vital M1 upgrades can get underway.

Again, my colleague Minister Fletcher has rightly pointed out that the federal government 'can best support state governments which have their own proactive strategy to fund major projects.' Unlike states like the ACT and NSW, the Queensland Labor government has refused to consider any proactive strategies. It has abandoned work done by the previous LNP government, and, instead of coming up with an alternative strategy, the only plan Mark Bailey can conjure is to complain and blame-shift in the hope that the federal government will just pay for it all.

Well, I am sorry to say that excuses and blame shifting do not sit well with the constituents of Forde. Commuters and residents in my electorate have had enough. I will continue to fight tooth and nail to secure this funding for the M1 while the Queensland Labor government is holding up the project. We could see construction on the M1 starting soon, if Queensland Labor and Mark Bailey stopped playing political games and instead focused on finding the funding to fix the M1. The sooner Mr Bailey stops making excuses and stops avoiding his funding responsibilities the sooner we can get the M1 upgraded.

Debate interrupted.

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