Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this Infrastructure Australia Amendment (Independent Review) Bill 2023 with grave concern for the future of vital infrastructure projects in my electorate of Fisher. Let me read a quote:

This is a government that doesn't have a plan for long-term infrastructure investment, that hasn't produced a pipeline of projects, that has gutted Infrastructure Australia and, therefore, will damage Australia's future economic growth and prosperity.

Do you know who said that? It was the current Prime Minister of Australia. He said it on 21 May 2018, just five years ago, when he was the opposition leader. Actually, at that stage he was probably the shadow infrastructure minister.

The Prime Minister has prided himself as being a prime minister of infrastructure. He was pumping up his chest and fluffing up his feathers today in question time, talking about how when he was the infrastructure minister this, when he was the infrastructure minister that. The reality is that, when we were in government over the last nine years, we had put in place a program of $120 billion worth of infrastructure for this country. Now, I'm all for infrastructure around this country, but what I want to do is spend the next 15 minutes talking in particular about some of the major infrastructure projects on the Sunshine Coast and how those infrastructure projects are now at risk.

Since 2016, when Ted O'Brien and I were elected to this place, we have made it our driving passion to make sure we got as much money as we possibly could for infrastructure, both road and rail, to benefit the Sunshine Coast. Up until when Labor won the election last year, we had been successful in gaining infrastructure funds for the Sunshine Coast to the tune of around $5.3 billion. We heard story after story after story—and I have lived on the coast 30 years and seen just how much the Sunshine Coast was abandoned by previous governments in relation to infrastructure. We saw infrastructure moneys going to Brisbane, the Gold Coast and, of course, Melbourne and Sydney, but very rarely did we see federal funds going to the Sunshine Coast.

This has got to be seen in light of the fact that the Sunshine Coast is now the ninth-largest city in this country and one of the fastest-growing regions in the country. We are tipped to have around 500,000 people living on the Sunshine Coast by 2041. We're going to be hosting numerous disciplines on the 2032 Olympic Games. So it's incredibly important that we are able to move people around not just within the Sunshine Coast but from Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast and from the Sunshine Coast to Brisbane.

So Ted O'Brien and I set about annoying the absolute hell out of Darren Chester, the then infrastructure minister, the member for Gippsland. In fact, Darren Chester had a pet name for me: he used to call me 'Canberra's Biggest Pain in the'—I can't say what comes next! But it's a moniker I take with great pride because I wanted to be a pain, let's say, in his neck, because that's what my job was to do. My job was to be a pain in his neck to get funding for my region.

We got funding for the duplication of the North Coast railway line. That was a project that the federal government didn't need to put a cent—not one cent—towards, but we knew that, if it were left to the state government of Queensland, it would never have been done. The state government of Queensland has this pathological dislike for investing money on the Sunshine Coast. We went to the Labor state government—this is going back to about 2017-2018—and we said, 'We will fund half of this project.' I think it was a $720 million project, and we offered half the cost even though we didn't need to put a cent towards it. And what was Mark Bailey and Annastacia Palaszczuk's response? Despite us not having to put a cent towards it, they said: 'We're not content with 50 per cent. We want you to pay more than 50 per cent.' Ultimately, that project has now started, but, because we couldn't agree on the level of funding from the Labor state government, they shrank the scope of the works. The duplication of the railway line was supposed to go from Beerburrum—it's the member for Gippsland himself! I was just talking about you!

It was supposed to go from Beerburrum to Landsborough, but the Queensland state government's version of doing a deal with the federal government was basically just to shrink the scope of works. They brought the duplication back to Beerwah. That was their concept of meeting us halfway, which is extremely disappointing, of course, if you live on the railway line north of Beerwah.

Another project that is near and dear to my heart, and one that Ted O'Brien and I secured just last year, at the beginning of 2022, was half the cost of building the North Coast railway line into Maroochydore: $1.6 billion. From Beerwah, running a spur line into Caloundra, up to Kawana and into Maroochydore is very, very important. Back when the railway line was built, 100 years ago, everybody lived in the hinterland; no-one lived on the coast. Now the coast represents 85-plus per cent of the population base of the Sunshine Coast. Yet, we don't have a train line. We don't have a railway line. So Ted—the member for Fairfax—and I set about getting funding, and we secured $1.6 billion.

I was really pleased to see that in the last budget, in October last year, the new Labor infrastructure minister—nothing like our old infrastructure minister, I hasten to add—kept that $1.6 billion in the budget, waiting for Queensland Labor to match it. But what do we hear from Queensland Labor? Crickets. Nothing. What do we hear from Mark Bailey? Nothing. What do we hear from Jason Hunt? Nothing. What do we hear from Rob Skelton? Nothing. We came to Queensland Labor with $1.6 billion—half the cost to build this project. What did we have to put towards this project? Zip. Nothing. Nada. But we came to them and said: 'We'll give you $1.6 billion. All you have to do is match it.' We are still waiting. We are still waiting for Queensland Labor.

They told us last year that they would do a review and that review would be handed down at the end of 2023. Now they're saying 2024. Do you know what? Do you know what's happening in 2032? It's a little thing called the Olympic and Paralympic games. We're lucky enough to host a number of disciplines on the Sunshine Coast. How the Premier of Queensland thinks they're going to get people—hundreds of thousands of spectators—from Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast and back without rail is beyond me. It's absolutely beyond me.

Just last week Annastacia Palaszczuk did a shuffling of the deck chairs on the Titanic when she reshuffled her cabinet. What she should have done was shuffled Mark Bailey out of his position back to the backbench and put someone in the job that is actually prepared to do the work. This is an incredibly important project for the Sunshine Coast. The old minister for infrastructure—'old' being the operative word—who's sitting behind me, used to call me Canberra's biggest pain in the beep! I will be—and am—George Street in Brisbane's biggest pain in the beep until we get funding from the Queensland state government to match what we did.

Another really important project for infrastructure on the Sunshine Coast—get this, Member for Gippsland! The member for Gippsland was, I think, the infrastructure minister at the time, in 2019, when we announced another project that we would half fund for the Queensland department of transport. Now, did we have to put any money towards this project? No, not a cent. But we came up and offered another $160 million—once again, because the Queensland state government is so incompetent and so inept that we had to do the heavy lifting for them when we were in government. This was in relation to the Mooloolah River Interchange. We offered $160 million to build this $320 million stage 1 of the rejuvenation, the renovation of the Mooloolah River Interchange. Get this—you won't believe this—

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