Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

A very proud Queenslander, thank you very much, Member for Fisher; I agree. As a Queenslander, if I look at my patch from the sunny coast down to Brisbane, let me tell you about what the coalition government is doing there. If you looked at the Infrastructure Australia report—it came out on Monday—it talked about the Bruce Highway through to the north coast. Nearly $930 million invested—80 per cent funded by the Commonwealth—and it starts construction within the next few months on the Sunshine Coast Bruce Highway. Up the road, at the Maroochydore interchange on the Sunshine Coast, $187 million will be spent on starting construction over the next couple of years.

The coalition committed, and is delivering, $6.7 billion for the Bruce Highway. How much did Labor, with the member for Grayndler in charge, commit to the Bruce Highway? Only $4.1 billion—$6.7 billion is actually higher than $4.1 billion—and the problem that the member for Grayndler likes to ignore is the fact that they only wanted to fund it fifty-fifty. They were not prepared to come to the party. I will finish with this about the Sunshine Coast: it took a coalition government to deliver on a concessional loan of up to $181 million for an upgrade of the airport. Labor are full of it. With that said, a very big happy birthday to the member for Grayndler.

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