Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As you would be aware, the cities agenda is so crucial for our future economic prosperity. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister has paid a lot of lip service to the cities agenda but has got nothing done when it comes to improving the productivity, liveability and sustainability of our cities.

Of course, being from a Brisbane electorate, the electorate of Griffith, the cities agenda is highly important to me and to my constituents. That is why it is important for me to say that our council, the Brisbane City Council, needs new energy. The Brisbane City Council needs new energy and the man to deliver that is Rod Harding.

Rod Harding will be an excellent Lord Mayor of Brisbane and I am supporting him wholeheartedly. One of the things I love about Rod is that he takes congestion in the suburbs seriously. It is not just all about gold-plated inner-city projects for Rod Harding; it is all about delivering projects that are going to help the lives of the people who live in our suburbs. In my electorate, Rod has said that his 'Suburban Congestion Busting Fund' will deal with some really important projects that are really going to help deliver better public transport to take pressure off roads and deliver better roads.

One of those projects is the Eastern Busway TransitWay on Old Cleveland Road. It will upgrade five intersections with bus priority measures along Old Cleveland Road, between Cavendish Road, Coorparoo and Creek Road, Carindale. It would fast-track the upgrade of Wynnum Road, stage 1—Shafston Avenue to Canning Bridge—to be completed early and then stage 2, from Canning Bridge to Hawthrone Road. For anyone who lives anywhere on that peninsula, whether it is Hawthorne, Bulimba or down at Balmoral, if they have queued at that intersection they know what I am talking about and know how important it is that we do something about that intersection.

It also includes the upgrade of the intersection at Lytton Road and Col Gardiner Drive, Morningside, with traffic lights and a right-turning lane. And, of course, it would kick-start the Coorparoo open rail level crossing overpass, a matter that I have been campaigning for since before I became a member of this parliament. We have to address that level crossing on Cavendish Road at Coorparoo. That rail crossing is such a snarl, it is the ban of the existence of many of our local residents who use those road every day to get to work.

One of my favourite things about the new energy Rod Harding will deliver to the Brisbane City Council if he is elected Lord Mayor is that he has made the commitment that as Brisbane's new Lord Mayor one of his first acts would be to immediately commence construction of what he hopes will become an iconic Brisbane attraction. That is a bridge that the current Lord Mayor and his LNP council have been talking about for more than a decade.

It is a pedestrian bridge from the Kangaroo Point cliffs. It will give access to the precinct around the cliffs and make that precinct more accessible. It will be an iconic project and it is just one example of how this LNP administration is all talk and no action. We have a Prime Minister who says one thing and does another. We have a Lord Mayor in Brisbane who says a lot of things and the only thing he ever delivers is gold-plated inner-city projects and nothing for the suburbs, so I am very pleased to support Rod Harding as Lord Mayor.