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

I rise this afternoon to talk about an issue of vital importance not only to my electorate of Moncrieff but to all Gold Coast residents. That issue is road infrastructure. It is of particular concern to me because Gold Coast residents are now choking as a result of the success of our city. The Gold Coast has been Australia’s fastest growing city for the past 25 years, and it is anticipated by noted demographer Bernard Salt from KPMG that it will be Australia’s fastest growing region for the next 25 years.

As a representative of this city, along with the members for Forde, Fadden and McPherson, I must put on the record my total frustration with the complete lack of action on road infrastructure by the Queensland state Labor government. It is very clear, when one looks at traffic congestion on the Gold Coast, where the fault lies. To put it in the most basic terms, if you look at all roads on the Gold Coast, there is only one for which the federal government has a significant proportion of responsibility, and that is the M1. The back highway, the Pacific Highway, whatever name you want to put to it—that is the road with which the federal government has a connection and for which it has some responsibility.

With that one exception, every other road on the Gold Coast is either a state government road or a local council road, and, in both respects, the Commonwealth government has stepped up to the plate in terms of funding. When it comes to local government roads, under the Roads to Recovery program, which has seen record investment go direct to local councils from the Australian government, we more than doubled road funding to the Gold Coast City Council. When you turn to the issue of Commonwealth government funding for the Queensland Labor government, this is where the scab can be lifted off to reveal the state minister responsible for the complete lack of action on Gold Coast roads—the Minister for Transport and Main Roads, Paul Lucas.

Under AusLink, a project investing some $15 billion in land transport infrastructure across Australia, we see that funding for Queensland roads was increased by the Howard government by some 119 per cent. So we more than doubled road funding to the Queensland Labor government, notwithstanding that the Beattie Labor government is the single biggest beneficiary of the GST windfall from the Australian government. So, despite being awash with cash through the GST and through the Commonwealth government having more than doubled the amount of road funding, the Beattie state Labor government is still unable, even at the most cursory level, to provide any kind of real investment in Gold Coast roads. The consequences are that Gold Coast residents continue to choke from traffic congestion.

It is particularly frustrating to see that one consequence of this lack of action on state roads is that there is now an obscene amount of pressure on the Pacific Motorway. In the same way that it has not acted with respect to the Ipswich Motorway, the Queensland government, rather than build new arterial roads or improve the carrying capacity of arterial roads along the Pacific Motorway in response to the rapid expansion of the population base of the Gold Coast, seems quite happy to sit back and allow all of the suburban traffic to flow onto the Pacific Motorway, resulting in the ridiculous situation where the motorway effectively becomes gridlocked between the hours of 7 am and 9 am and from 3.30 pm until about 6 pm—gridlocked because the state government refuses to spend the money required to ensure our rapidly growing city can adequately have its infrastructure needs met. The state government is happy to funnel traffic onto the Pacific Motorway and then claim that the Commonwealth government is not doing enough.

My newsflash to Paul Lucas, the Queensland minister, is that, with the Commonwealth government having more than doubled the amount of road funding it provides to the state government, Gold Coast residents demand action, and I demand action, from the Queensland state government. We do not own the roads, but we are happy to write the cheques and we have been writing the cheques. A 119 per cent increase is more than enough money for the Queensland state Labor government to pick up its act and start building the kind of road infrastructure that Gold Coast residents rightly deserve and demand. I call on the Queensland state Labor government to stop passing the buck and to step up to the plate.