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

To the surprise of the member for Wright, I will commend him for his speech and agree with him and commend South-East Queensland Council of Mayors for their advocacy for South-East Queensland! In the last 20 years, 20 per cent of the growth in the Australian economy has been in South-East Queensland. One in seven Australians lives in South-East Queensland. So the topic of my speech tonight will be important to the mayors in South-East Queensland.

Recently I had the pleasure of showing my good friend the member for Canberra and shadow assistant minister for cybersecurity and defence personnel the RAAF Base at Amberley in my electorate of Blair. The Amberley RAAF Base is the largest base in the Royal Australian Air Force. It is host to six squadrons, the C-17 Globemasters and the F/A-18F Super Hornets, and it recently welcomed the EA-18G Growlers—all of which are integral to Australia's national defence.

Currently undergoing a $1 billion dollar investment and upgrade, the base employs over 5,500 ADF personnel and civilians. There is a complete bipartisan commitment to the upgrade of the base. I am very pleased with and will commend the Turnbull government for their commitment to upgrading the base, just as we upgraded it when we were last in government. Hosting such an important piece of Australia's defence infrastructure is a source of great pride for the people of Ipswich, and any opportunity to visit and see the great work done by the hardworking men and women of the Australian Defence Force is certainly a privilege.

On this occasion, however, I felt concerned when I went with the member for Canberra. Despite the growth of Amberley base, the Turnbull government has refused to acknowledge the very real and pressing need for infrastructure in the local area adjacent to the base. Nowhere is this neglect seen more than the government's failure to upgrade the Cunningham Highway.

The Cunningham Highway is a major Australian road. It provides an inland link between Brisbane and Sydney and forms part of the National Land Transport Network. As well as being part of the daily commute for locals living in Ipswich suburbs like Yamanto, Ripley, Raceview and Willowbank, it is also used by the overwhelming majority of ADF members stationed at Amberley to get there and back each day. It is also a key haulage route. Almost 3,000 trucks travel that route each day, making up part of the 17,000 vehicles utilising this stretch of road between Yamanto and Ebenezer Creek. With freight numbers on the rise and the local area experiencing an almost unprecedented population boom, these numbers are only set to rise. As any local will tell you, for four hours every day this road effectively becomes a car park as cars, trucks and ADF personnel sit queued up on the highway trying to access the Amberley Interchange so they can get access to the base. When people and goods cannot get to their destination on time, it hurts businesses, it hurts productivity and harms families.

This stretch now lays claim to the unwanted title of the Ipswich region's No. 1 crash zone, many of which have resulted in fatalities. We should be doing everything we can to keep ADF personnel safe, not forcing them to put their lives at risk every morning to get to work. Just yesterday, a two-car collision on this stretch of road shut down the highway for hours—something which local residents have come to expect on an almost weekly basis. This Amberley Interchange is not a distant problem that will face us some time in the future. It needs to be dealt with right now. I commend the Willowbank Area Group for their advocacy across this space.

I call on the Turnbull government, which has not allocated one cent towards this project. I call on the Queensland state government to also come to the table, commit to an updated business case and outline a detailed concept plan. It is something the federal government should not play politics with. It should come to the party with an agreement on the percentage and the commitment to fund this project so that the crashes, congestions and needs of thousands of Ipswich locals will be attended to. The cost to the base is enormous and the base's benefit to Ipswich is also enormous.

The government's refusal to act on important defence related projects does not stop at the Cunningham Highway. I commend the concept of the Amberley defence centre. The Amberley Defence Support Centre has been on the table for a long time. It needs to be processed. The 3½ thousand civilian jobs it could create would make a big impact in our region. So I call on the government. The Amberley Defence Support Centre is a particularly important project, but so is the Willowbank interchange. It would satisfy the requirements of Infrastructure Australia, which considers this a priority project. I call on both sides to do the work that is necessary. (Time expired)