Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today Premier Beattie announced, after visiting the Queensland Governor, that he would be calling the state election. I rise tonight to raise some of the key issues that I know the people of the Gold Coast will be taking into consideration when it comes to the forthcoming state election. I also rise to respond to comments that the Queensland Minister for Transport and Main Roads, Mr Paul Lucas, made with respect to Gold Coast road funding. I will deal with that issue first because Mr Lucas, the non-performing Queensland government Minister for Transport and Main Roads, alleges that the Howard government has not provided adequate road funding for the people of the Gold Coast. He makes the claim that, in some way, Gold Coast constituents and, in particular, constituents in the state marginal Labor seat of Mudgeeraba have been underserviced by the Howard government.

This claim has been made despite the fact that I had the pleasure of announcing as recently as only a couple of months ago that the Queensland Labor government has received a 119 per cent increase in road funding from the Howard government—more than double the level of road funding that the Queensland government has ever previously had. Yet the Labor government has the hide and the audacity to have its minister stand up and claim that it does not have enough money to undertake the adequate road funding and road planning that the people of the Gold Coast desperately need, as it is the fastest growing region in Queensland.

In addition to that, I had the distinct pleasure of announcing that, thanks to the Howard government, road funding to the Gold Coast City Council under the Roads to Recovery program has been doubled for this year—doubled because of the safe, strong, secure and responsible economic management of the Howard government, which has seen budget surplus after budget surplus. It means that we have more money to put into Gold Coast roads so that our fastest growing region of the country has access to the kind of road infrastructure that it expects and that it demands.

In addition, yesterday I announced $13.9 million in untied local grants from the Howard government—again, another record amount to the Gold Coast City Council. As a consequence of this government’s responsible economic management, a total of $189 million in road funding has flowed from the federal government to the Gold Coast. All I hear from the state Labor minister is the claim: ‘We don’t have enough money to get on and build the roads that Gold Coasters want.’ He had the audacity to call me the ‘Typhoid Mary of Gold Coast federal politics’. I have no understanding of the way in which Typhoid Mary possibly has application in this context, so I will not get into that. However, it reminded me a little of some remarks that Leo Tolstoy made when he said:

I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means—except by getting off his back.

That is exactly the situation we have with this non-acting, non-responsible Labor minister, who claims that he would love to help the people of the Gold Coast if only he had the tools at his disposal. I say to him and I say to the ineffectual state Labor member for Mudgeeraba, Dianne Reilly, that it is high time the Queensland Labor government and she started delivering for the people of Mudgeeraba and started delivering for the people of the Gold Coast, because they have record funding at their disposal—the council has record funding at its disposal—and it is time that they made the Gold Coast a priority in the same way that they make the Brisbane-Ipswich corridor a priority for the Beattie Labor government. Stop the Brisbane bias, stop the Brisbane focus of Peter Beattie, and start to put some focus on regions like the Gold Coast.

This forthcoming state election is going to be crucial in a number of key areas. Road funding by far is the single biggest issue, but it is also clear that health is a major problem. The people of the Gold Coast know that they are underserviced when it comes to the delivery of health services. In addition, this increasingly arrogant state Labor government is determined to put a cruise ship terminal in one of the last vestiges of natural resource on the Gold Coast, The Spit. I say to Peter Beattie on behalf of the people of my electorate of Moncrieff: you need to listen, you need to deliver and you need to make sure that you are doing the best by the people of the Gold Coast.