Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why have the Prime Minister and the Liberal-National Party government reneged on their promises to fix the Darra to Rocklea section of the Ipswich Motorway? This is the remaining bottleneck on the Ipswich Motorway.

The Labor government built the Dinmore to Darra section of the Ipswich Motorway at a cost of $2.8 billion. It was started, built and completed under the Labor government. In our last budget, we put $279 million in to kick-start the final section of the Ipswich Motorway. It is not located in Blair, it is mainly located in Moreton, but the Ipswich Motorway is the principle corridor between Ipswich and Brisbane. It connects through the Warrego and Cunningham highways, the Logan Motorway and the Centenary Highway in South-East Queensland.

The council of South-East Queensland mayors has been here in Parliament House this week and I met with them. I have spoken previously in parliament about their important infrastructure needs for South-East Queensland. We gave $40 million to the former government in Queensland to design and complete the project business case for the Ipswich Motorway Darra to Rocklea section upgrade. About 100,000 vehicles a day, at peak hour, can go on Ipswich Motorway, and what is proposed is six lanes between the Centenary Motorway at Darra and the Granard Road interchange at Rocklea and some improvements to interchanges on the way. But the $558 million proposed in stage 1 of the upgrade would be from the Oxley roundabout to Suscatand Street along the Ipswich Motorway.

The coalition, over the four federal elections that I have been involved in, have opposed the Ipswich Motorway upgrade entirely. In fact, they voted against the Ipswich Motorway upgrade again and again. The now Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, in parliament in October 2009, said he would stop the construction on the Ipswich Motorway between Dinmore and Goodna. That was a great help to me in my election campaign against my opponents, who were going to stop construction and jeopardise 10,000 jobs. But, right before the last federal election, the now Attorney-General stood with the candidates from the LNP in Oxley and Blair, and the defeated former state member for Ipswich, and all of a sudden had a road-to-Damascus conversion. This is what Senator Brandis had to say: 'If an Abbott government is elected you can be quite sure that this money will be invested; it will be spent.' And, to the credit of the Abbott government, $279 million to kick-start it was put in the last budget. We had hopes that this was a change, but, no—Campbell Newman and the LNP government had a blue with us, and it had a blue with this government, about what should happen.

So what has happened? Absolutely nothing from the 'Infrastructure Prime Minister.' Nothing has been done in relation to the final section of the Ipswich Motorway, which is so important for places like Brisbane, Ipswich and all of South-East Queensland. What will this do? It will improve road safety, it will ease traffic congestion—it is a goat track. It will improve traffic reliability and improve travelling time for motorway users. It is important for those farmers who want to get their produce to the Rocklea Markets and for those people who want to get their minerals to the Port of Brisbane for export. It is important for those people who travel into Brisbane for specialist health services. It is important for those people who commute for sporting and cultural activities along the Ipswich Motorway to Brisbane. It is has been the bane of people's lives. The Council of Mayors South East Queensland is absolutely correct to make this a priority.

The government have the money in the budget: get on with the job and help the people of South-East Queensland. If they say they are in favour of small business and economic development in a region where one in seven Australians live—which has contributed to 20 per cent of the growth in employment, economic development and GDP in the last 10 years—they should put the money in this vital infrastructure project, which they say they are now in favour of. I can tell you this: if, at the next election, they have not started it, I will be politically crucifying the candidate who runs against me from the LNP in relation to this. I look forward to them explaining why nothing has been done.