Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This year's budget will cause a great deal of pain for families, for young people and for pensioners across the electorate of Lilley. But today I want to talk about its impact on two very important projects, namely, the upgrade of the Gateway Motorway and also the Moreton Bay Rail Link.

The residents of the northern suburbs, particularly in the electorate of Petrie, have been waiting for the Moreton Bay Rail Link for decades—nigh on 30 or 40 years. This is a very substantial commitment that was made by the previous Labor government and it is a project which the current state government has tried on many occasions to stop and to thwart. Fortunately, community pressure has stopped that so far.

Of course, the upgrade to the Gateway Motorway is also critically important because the electorates of Lilley and Petrie sit at the apex of growth pressures in South-East Queensland, containing the Gateway Motorway, the northern rail link and, of course, the airport. What this means is that there is an enormous amount of traffic through those electorates, and particularly traffic which spills over onto suburban roads. That is why the upgrade of the Gateway Motorway is so important. Three years ago, the Labor government delivered $125 million for a significant upgrade to the Gateway, which is taking place right now between Sandgate Road and the Deagon Deviation.

Only last year, Campbell Newman's government tried to put a toll on this road, which would have been very unfortunate indeed and which would have had a dramatic impact on many. That did not go ahead because there was very strong community pressure. And we have to keep that pressure on because now there is also pressure on the funding of the further upgrade of the Gateway Motorway, which our government had committed to. In this budget, something like half of the funds—$579 million—for the further upgrade of the Gateway Motorway is not due to be delivered until after the next election. So the community will have to keep the pressure on the Abbott and Newman government to make sure that that upgrade continues.

But what is more concerning in the budget is that $159 million has been taken from the Moreton Bay Rail Link project, two years out from the delivery of that project. The government has claimed that it will come in $159 million under budget but, of course, this project still has two years to completion and I fail to see how they could make that sort of projection at this stage. There has not been a single track laid yet, but suddenly it is under budget.

So I think this project is also at risk from the savage cuts which are being imposed across the board and impacting on so many families, not just in the electorate of Lilley but across the electorates of Petrie and more broadly in the northern suburbs. These transport links are critical to the quality of life in the north of Brisbane and I will certainly be at the forefront of keeping pressure on both the state and federal governments to make sure they meet their commitments.