Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Bruce Highway, as it passes through the Sunshine Coast, carries around 60,000 vehicles every day. It is heavily congested in the peak-hour periods, and this volume of traffic has already led commuters in my community to give the highway a new name: 'the Bruce Car Park'.

In the March 2016 RACQ unroadworthy-roads survey, the Bruce Highway received the most nominations. And who can blame those respondents? As it is, the 100-kilometre journey to Brisbane from the Sunshine Coast can take as long as three hours—as it did for me on Sunday in coming to this place—but it is set to get much worse. Traffic is predicted to grow significantly over the next 15 years, and modelling suggests that this will result in lengthy delays, not only on the run into Brisbane but at a number of major interchanges through the Sunshine Coast. Without action, extensive queuing is expected to develop on other arterial roads in our region, such as on Caloundra Road and the Mooloolah River interchange.

The economic cost of this congestion is enormous. It was already at least $17 million a year in 2011, but by 2031 it is expected to increase to $194 million.

The human cost is even greater. Every hour spent crawling along the Bruce Highway is another hour that hardworking people in my community cannot spend with their friends and families. These hours add up. Imagine what we could all do with an extra couple of hours a day.

Tragically, some families in our region have lost much more than two hours a day. Despite significant improvements over previous years, research by the RACQ suggests that around 12 per cent of all deaths on Australian highways still take place on the Bruce, with 30 losing their lives in 2015 alone.

As I have previously reported to the House, last September the government delivered on the first vital phase of these needed upgrades on the Sunshine Coast. The Minister for Infrastructure and Transport visited the Sunshine Coast with me, and we announced the long-awaited upgrade of the Caloundra Road-Sunshine Motorway project. This is a $929.3 million project, funded 80 per cent by the Commonwealth, and it will deliver an estimated benefit of more than $4 billion to the coast. The project will widen the highway to six lanes, as well as upgrading the Sunshine Motorway and Caloundra Road interchanges.

In my own constituency, we urgently need an upgrade to the Bruce Highway between Caboolture and Caloundra. We need to widen the highway between the Sunshine Coast and Caboolture from four lanes to six lanes—or, even better, to eight lanes—and we need to flood-proof the road between Caboolture and Steve Irwin Way.

This week saw the release of Infrastructure Australia's latest Infrastructure Priority List, the authoritative list of nationally significant infrastructure investments that Australia needs over the next 15 years. Its authors have said that the Bruce Highway in Queensland has long been recognised by Infrastructure Australia as a national priority. In the list, Infrastructure Australia have included two new Bruce Highway upgrades: one at Mackay, and Cooroy to Curra.

These are certainly important projects. But the widening of the highway between Caloundra and Caboolture did not make it onto that list. 'Why is that so?' I hear you ask. Unfortunately, it is not on the list because the state Labor government have not completed their planning study for this particular stretch of road. The Bruce Highway planning study was announced in July 2015 by the state Labor government—2015. We in the federal government put up three-quarters of the money for this study because we believe in the Bruce Highway and know only too well what is needed. The Queensland government tell us that the study will report in mid-2018. That is three years to do a study when we all know what the outcome should be.

My LNP colleagues in the state and federal parliaments—indeed, the members for Fairfax and Wide Bay—have pushed time and again for this report to be fast-tracked. We will continue to fight to get the Sunshine Coast the Bruce Highway that our people deserve. Without doubt, this is the single most important issue that has been identified by residents of the Sunshine Coast, and I will not rest until we achieve it.

Question agreed to.

House adjourned at 19 : 57