Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs and Defence Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This weekend Queenslanders have a very stark choice: they can vote for Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and a Labor team that listened to best medical advice and kept our state safe and our people safe and have a plan to unite and recover this state and its economy, or they can listen to and vote for an opposition leader—who just a few months ago was trying to be toppled by the LNP hierarchy in Queensland, who sat at Campbell Newman's right hand and perpetrated cuts and chaos in my local community. Hundreds of nurses, doctors and frontline service providers were cut from the Ipswich community while Deb Frecklington was there with Campbell Newman. It will be Campbell Newman revisited in Queensland if Queenslanders vote for Deb Frecklington and her team. This weekend, I urge my local communities across Ipswich, Somerset and the western part of Brisbane to vote for the Labor MPs in Ipswich, Ipswich West, Jordan and Bundamba and the Labor candidates in Moggill, Nanango, Lockyer and Scenic Rim.

Regardless of the outcome of the election, which I hope will be the re-election of the Labor government, I urge the new Queensland government to work with this government, the Morrison government, on a number of important projects in my community. They include, for example, the last section of the Ipswich Motorway. Currently, the work between currently between Darra and Rocklea, but work, from the Oxley roundabout—and on the Oxley roundabout itself—to what we used to call the Centenary Interchange needs to be done. At the last federal election, Labor committed $500 million towards that project if we won the election. The current federal government, the Morrison government, have yet to commit to that project—but they have form in this regard. All through the Howard years they opposed the upgrade of the Ipswich Motorway from Dinmore through to Darra. It took a Labor government to undertake, design, and complete that particular part of the motorway.

Another project in my community which is really crucial is the Cunningham Highway upgrade between Yamanto and Ebenezer Creek, which is necessary. Why? Because it is just outside the RAAF base at Amberley, where about 8,500 people work each and every day. It is a pinch point. It is a shocking road. It is notorious. It's infamous. It's upgrade is crucial and critical. But the Morrison government have done nothing about it for the last seven years.

In addition to that, we have also got the necessity for the extension of the rail line from Springfield to Ipswich. Again, the Morrison government have done nothing in relation to that, nor have they done anything in relation to significant road funding projects in my community—nor, indeed, by the way, a second crossing of the Bremer River, which is absolutely crucial. The Morrison government has failed Ipswich and my local community.