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

I'm changing tone. I'm here tonight to speak about the lack of infrastructure on the Sunshine Coast and more broadly throughout Australia. This government, through its infrastructure minister, announced a 90-day review of every Commonwealth government infrastructure project. That 90-day review has now blown out to almost 200 days. People on the Sunshine Coast are absolutely sick and tired—they are absolutely sick to death—of the state Labor government and now the federal Labor government withholding critical infrastructure.

When we were in government, the former coalition government allocated $1.6 billion to bring passenger rail from Beerwah to Caloundra, Kawana and Maroochydore. I was really pleased when the current infrastructure minister said that they were going to keep that $1.6 billion in the budget. They kept it in their mini budget in October 2022 and they even kept it in their May budget of 2023, but very shortly after that they announced this 90-day review, so yet again the people of the Sunshine Coast are left wondering whether they are ever going to get passenger rail along the coastal strip.

We have less than nine years until the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games start in 2032. How does the federal or state Labor governments expect to be able to get people from point A to point B, from Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast, for those games? How? Are they going to use the Bruce Highway? The Bruce Highway is logjammed now.

We need critical infrastructure. It's not just in relation to the Olympic Games or the Paralympic Games. The Sunshine Coast is expecting to have a population of 500,000 people by 2040. That's another 170,000 people on top of what we have now. Already our roads are bursting at the seams with traffic. We're one of the most popular destinations in the country, and fair enough. It's a beautiful place to live. Everybody is moving there, particularly from down south. It's not hard to believe or imagine why. We are bursting at the seams. We have a critical need for public transport infrastructure, and this government has put everything on hold.

It's not just about heavy rail and passenger rail. This government is also putting at risk a $160 million commitment for the construction of the Mooloolah River Interchange, one of the most dangerous intersections in Queensland, if not the country. The $160 million that Ted O'Brien, the member for Fairfax, and I were able to secure to pay for half the cost of stage 1 also now has a great axe swinging over it. What really gets me is that this government talks about housing and claims to be the government of housing.

Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ha, ha.

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

I can hear my friend the member for Deakin laughing. Would you believe, Member for Deakin, that they have actually demolished the homes of more than 300 Sunshine Coast locals and turfed them out of their home to build this interchange, which now may not even happen at all? We're finding a situation where more than 300 Sunshine Coast locals have been dislocated in the worst housing crisis this country has ever seen and now, because of this infrastructure minister's delays and dithering, that project may not even happen. If this government is serious about housing, and if it's serious about infrastructure, it'll commit to those projects on the Sunshine Coast.