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

No-one could deny that public transport on the Sunshine Coast is in a parlous state. Thanks to decades of neglect from successive Queensland Labor state governments, we have infrequent buses that don't go where they're needed, a single-track rail line—the same single track that was laid in the 1890s—that misses our major population centres by nearly 20 kilometres, and an expensive coastal corridor of reserved land that has been nothing but a nature strip since the turn of this century.

Sunshine Coast Council recently published their solution, a so-called mass transit plan, which is in truth only a $1.5 billion proposal for light rail on the Sunshine Coast. Council's light rail would run from Caloundra along Nicklin Way through Kawana and then along Alexandra Parade, finishing after 22 kilometres in Maroochydore. It could not be more inappropriate for my community. Anyone who drives on Nicklin Way or Alexandra Parade in my electorate knows that these roads are already at more than capacity, and not only at peak hour. Light rail would take a lane from each of these roads and leave them as nothing but car parks. It would not even reduce the number of cars on the roads. Our community is not like a capital city. It is dispersed across a wide area, and no-one, even with light rail, will be able to get everywhere they need to go without a private car. For those who live along the route, it would be a nightmare. Council's glossy consultation materials carefully hide the heavy fixed power lines, the crawling traffic and the screeching metal tracks.

In their report to council which informed this project, PricewaterhouseCoopers actually examined three options for mass transit. These included dedicated bus lanes and another option for electric trackless trams like those now being introduced elsewhere with great success. However, the light rail option had one advantage in council's criteria which set it apart from the rest: it had a far bigger impact on what councils call urban transformation. Light rail for the Sunshine Coast is not a public transport plan; it is a high-density development plan. The proposal would include rezoning an area of 400 metres on either side of the track for most of its length from Caloundra to Maroochydore to allow the construction of apartment blocks. This 400-metre zone reaches all the way to the beach along much of the proposed route. It covers an area which more than 11,000 families have chosen to call home, specifically because of the low-density living that they have now. If council's light rail is allowed to go ahead, those 11,000 families would very quickly find themselves joined by 40,000 more—up to 100,000 people squeezed into a wall of tiny apartments and townhouses along a narrow coastal strip. There is another city in South-East Queensland like that, and most people on the Sunshine Coast moved to our community because they didn't want to be there; they wanted to be on the Sunshine Coast.

I want to congratulate Tracey Goodwin-McDonald and Kate Harvey of the Sunshine Coast Mass Transit Action Group for raising public awareness of this important local issue, and I want to thank my friend the state LNP member for Kawana, Jarrod Bleijie, for his support of this group. I've long been advocating for a true public transport solution on the Sunshine Coast that would make a real difference.

We need to bring heavy rail up from Beerwah along the CAMCOS corridor to Caloundra, Kawana and, eventually, Maroochydore. The CAMCOS corridor was secured for this purpose and paid for some 20 years ago. It would require no resumptions of land. Infrastructure is already being built around the future stations. It would provide public transport for the same sections of the community as light rail, but with a key difference. Heavy rail would be connected to the North Coast rail line to Brisbane. Residents could use it not only to move around our community but to travel to Brisbane, taking cars off the Bruce Highway and the major coastal roads that connect to it. This is the public transport solution that will significantly improve quality of life for the people on the Sunshine Coast, and I intend to deliver it. I've had a number of meetings already with the Deputy Prime Minister and the minister for urban infrastructure about this project, and I won't stop fighting until I get it. (Time expired)