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

I am confused, and I'll tell you why I'm confused. This federal government wants to bring 1½ million immigrants into this country in the next five years. I'm confused because the Queensland state government wants to increase the number of houses on the Sunshine Coast by 80,600. I'm confused because, at the same time, this federal government has announced a 90-day review of all of the infrastructure projects in this country. If they haven't started, then they're up on the chopping block. I'm confused because the Labor state government will not commit to important projects on the Sunshine Coast, like the development of passenger rail into the Sunshine Coast. I'm confused because, even though passenger rail is 100 per cent the responsibility of the state government, Ted O'Brien and I were responsible for securing $1.6 billion—billion with a 'B'—for the state government to contribute passenger rail on the Sunshine Coast, and yet the Labor state government will not commit to it.

I'm confused because they want to introduce another 80,600 homes to my patch but don't want to commit to infrastructure. How can that be? How can they want to increase, between the state and federal Labor governments, such huge numbers of people to Australia and the Sunshine Coast, but they don't want to commit to infrastructure? How can it be that this federal government wants to undertake a cut-cut-cut approach? Because the infrastructure minister has a razor gang in place. They said it was going to be a 90-day review. That 90 days is over, and yet there's no outcome. We have, on the chopping block, on the Sunshine Coast, a $3.2 billion project that was going to employ 10,000 locals over an eight- or nine-year period. There is a huge pall of a question mark now over that project.

I'll tell you another project that is really worrying me: the Mooloolah River Interchange. When we were in government, we committed to pay half the cost of the first stage of the Mooloolah River Interchange. This government is banging on about housing. They have just put bulldozers through the houses of over 300 Sunshine Coast locals to build the Mooloolah River Interchange. Because of this infrastructure 90-day review, we now have that project under a question mark. More than 300 Sunshine Coast locals have just lost their homes. We committed $160 million to this project. The state government has just gone and bulldozed homes, seeing the eviction of more than 300 locals, and now this project, courtesy of this federal government, may not even get the go-ahead. And yet they stand in this place and lecture us about the importance of homes for Australians when potentially all of these homes could have been bulldozed for naught.

Those homes were bulldozed after this federal government announced its 90-day review. We've seen just recently—in fact, yesterday—Mark Bailey fudge some figures and mislead Queenslanders about the value of the building of rail and trains, and yet he won't resign. The transport minister in Queensland must resign for misleading Queenslanders about the value of the cost of trains. (Time expired)