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

This week the Queensland Labor Premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, has floated her most desperate thought bubble yet—an unfunded inland highway between Labor's marginal seats in the north and the southern border. The federal government is already investing more than $10 billion in improvements to the existing Bruce Highway. The state government is contributing just 20 per cent—okay, as per our funding agreement—but which one of these desperately needed upgrades to the Bruce Highway will Queensland Labor sacrifice to pay for their new thought-bubble highway? Which part of the Bruce will have its extra lane taken away? Which intersection won't be made safe?

A pie-in-the-sky new highway 500 kilometres west of the coast will be no comfort to my constituents who spend hours in grinding traffic on the road into Brisbane, nor the millions who use the Bruce Highway now. It won't be good news for the thousands of local tourists and tourism operators, whose visitors vow never to return to the sunny coast because they can't get home. Traffic is at a standstill now on existing state government roads in my region, like Caloundra Road, Nicklin Way and Kawana Way. We need urgent investment now in roads that people actually use, not a grandiose new multibillion dollar unfunded white elephant. The Queensland Labor government will say anything and do anything to clutch onto power while showing nothing but contempt for the people of South-East Queensland.