Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

If a charity raised funds for sick kids but didn't give them the money, there would be an uproar. But somehow it's appropriate for the Albanese government to hit motorists with a user charge and not spend the funds raised on building better roads. For every litre motorists pump into their car, they pay a fuel excise of 47.7c, giving the Commonwealth $15 billion per year. I agree with the Australian Automobile Association that the entire $15 billion, and not per cent less, should go directly back into road infrastructure. Anything less and the Labor government is robbing the drivers of more affordable second-hand fuel cars who can't afford a brand-new EV in the showroom. Instead the Albanese government is projected to withhold billions of dollars raised from the fuel excise for road upgrades, as communities in Wide Bay bury friends and family members who were taken too soon on our roads, particularly in Queensland where we've had a major spike in the road toll. Thirty-seven people were killed in 2022 on roads in the region of Wide Bay. Across Queensland, more motorists died last year than in any other state, tragically with a road toll of 299 fatalities recorded. Only four weeks into this year, our road toll has again spiked. Yet where is the fuel excise, the money extracted from motorists and originally designed for the upkeep of roads? Where is it being spent?

Compared with the coalition's March 2022 budget, land transport infrastructure spending has been slashed by billions of dollars over the forward estimates under Labor. In Queensland they have slashed $3.2 million from the Black Spot Program over four years; they've cut $62 million from the Roads of Strategic Importance over four years; and it now appears that Labor has kicked the much-needed Tiaro Bypass into the long grass. I think it's plain wrong to use the fuel excise for anything but its first intended purpose: safe road building to stop our devastating road deaths. If the government intends to keep the fuel excise, it must give the funds raised back to the roads they belong to. The latest funding profile indicated that the timing for the Tiaro Bypass, a nine-kilometre corridor, has been delayed at least a year, and major construction has not even started. The Queensland government won't seek more than $150 million for the four-lane Tiaro Bypass until 2026-27 or later, a full year or more later than previously indicated by the Queensland government.

Queensland Minister for Transport and Main Roads Mark Bailey has a shocking track record when it comes to delivering projects on time, as we saw with the Tinana overtaking lanes and the Bells Bridge intersection in Gympie, where funding was announced in January 2019 and construction is still underway some four years later. The Tiaro Bypass seems destined to suffer a similar prolonged delay because of Minister Bailey's inability to share the community's ambition to drive this road project forward as quickly as possible.

The former Deputy Prime Minister and minister for infrastructure Barnaby Joyce confirmed that the Australian government's share of funding for the project was available and ready to flow to the Queensland government. After Labor's budget, the office of the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, Catherine King, provided information which Mark Bailey said was inaccurate, with state Labor contradicting federal Labor and creating confusion about whether Tiaro was being funded or not. Who is actually telling the truth when it comes to this road? We know that Tiaro is the four-lane bypass Minister Bailey never wanted and said wasn't needed, and this funding report shows that motorists will continue to be put in danger for another four years or more. Now, with state Labor delaying projects and federal Labor cutting funding to road infrastructure, the deadly section between Gympie and Maryborough may not be four lanes for decades to come.

When the Commonwealth introduced a petrol tax more than a century ago, it told the motoring public that it would be entirely spent on roads, and I believe this should continue to happen.

See this speech in context