Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The federal Labor Party want to put more trucks down the Kessels Road corridor through my electorate. In fact, the Labor Party’s recently announced infrastructure spend, some $300 million, would not have been made unless Labor plans to send more B-double trucks, interstate trucks, along that Kessels Road corridor. It will become the Kessels highway. It will be an extension of the Ipswich Motorway—down Granard Road, Riawena Road, Kessels Road, Mount Gravatt-Capabala Road, hooking onto the Gateway Motorway. Why can’t Labor understand that the best course for trucks to follow would be the southern Brisbane Bypass, which is the Gateway Motorway and Logan Motorway continuation? It is a toll road imposed by the Beattie government, by the new Deputy Premier, Paul Lucas, but it is a better route for trucks, and every truckie in the local area understands that. Instead, Labor say that they will spend $300 million to give a green light to interstate trucks to travel down the Kessels Road corridor—the Kessels Road highway, the extension of the Ipswich Motorway that they are planning—and a red light to local residents, who use Mains Road to get onto the Pacific Motorway and into the city of Brisbane. There is a red light for local residents.

The extraordinary amount of money that this government has put in to try to make things better along that corridor still has not been expended. In 2001, the government put the first of many millions of dollars into the hands of the Queensland government for the task of building noise barrier fences along Riawena Road, so residents around Salisbury could in fact have some respite from the thud of heavy trucks during the middle of the night. Nothing has been built. Nothing has been done about this. At the same time, millions have been spent on research and consultation with local residents about what they would like to see done along that corridor. Do we need to engineer a solution at Mains and Kessels roads? The overwhelming view was that there were a range of things that needed to be done. The Australian government has been ready to do something about it, but the Queensland government has done nothing. We have put money into checking out, from an engineering point of view, the viability of the construction of an underpass at Mains and Kessels roads. But the Labor Party federally has just fallen into line with the demands of Queensland Inc.—the Queensland state government—for Kessels Road to be given a priority run for interstate trucks while local residents have to stop at red lights at the Mains and Kessels roads intersection.

I heard the Labor Party former deputy mayor, Len Ardill, on Brisbane radio today. Mr Ardill said, quite rightly, that something has to be done about the flow of traffic along Mains Road. I agree with Len Ardill. He is a longstanding resident of the Sunnybank area, as I have been. He has been there a bit longer than me. I have had 37 years in that area. I went to school with his son, Leonard, at Runcorn primary school in the early seventies. Len Ardill is right when he says that something has to be done along Mains Road. My plan is quite straightforward—that is, put Mains Road under Kessels Road, giving a clear run for local residents, a green light for local residents, while the big, interstate trucks get the red light at the intersection of Kessels and Mains roads. They are the ones that should be made to wait. They should be told, ‘This is the wrong route for you to travel.’ Yet Labor have said: ‘We’ll ignore the view of local residents. We’ll ignore the result of millions of dollars of research, millions of dollars of effort to try and make a difference along this corridor.’ The Queensland government—Paul Lucas and Queensland Inc. in another one of those ‘let Queenslanders down by the minute’ sleazy deals—has decided to opt instead to give a green light to interstate trucks.

The federal Labor Party are linked, root and branch, to this ‘ignore the views of ordinary Queenslanders’ style of government. I have been appealing to the member for Batman to walk away from this, but he will not do it. What he has said is that he does not care about the ordinary Queenslanders in my area who need a clear run to the city along Mains Road. He does not care that 84 per cent of local residents in the research I have done want Mains Road to go under Kessels Road. Instead, he demands that Kessels Road goes under Mains Road and local residents should stop at stop lights while interstate trucks get the clear way through. I am happy to fight an election on this. The Labor Party are 100 per cent wrong on the expenditure of $300 million on this. The Howard government is determined to engineer the right solution that works for local residents not interstate trucks. (Time expired)