Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Only a couple of days ago the Queensland Labor Party leadership stood in front of cameras and celebrated what effectively is the halving of a rail project to Maroochydore for twice the price and despite the fact that they don't even have that project funded. It's only a Labor Party that is brazen enough to try to wrap up a failure and call it a victory.

There is a single project that should be the centrepiece of the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and that is a passenger rail line connecting the Brisbane CBD with the Maroochydore CBD on the Sunshine Coast. This project has been under development for seven years. It was in 2017 that the then coalition government announced a faster rail project, with $20 million to be spread across only three business cases that would connect a region to a capital city. At that time it was crystal clear, because of the development on the Sunshine Coast, that we needed to get infrastructure ahead of the population curve.

I took the time then, due to that initiative of the coalition government, to meet with the Lord Mayor of Brisbane, to meet with the mayor of Moreton Bay, to meet with the mayor of the Sunshine Coast and also to meet with the mayor of Noosa to encourage them to put politics to one side and unite around the idea of connecting the Sunshine Coast coastal strip to Brisbane. I also met with the then Minister for Transport and Main Roads, Mark Bailey, and said to him, 'Let's put our politics to one side. This is good for South-East Queensland; let's work together.' And there was a unity ticket on that. I was able to put together a syndicate that then put on the table a compelling value proposition that won the day. It was one of three projects chosen that received $5 million from the federal government, with an expectation from the state of matching the funding, fifty-fifty.

But then Queensland Labor attempted to thwart the effort by refusing to contribute its $5 million. Instead it said, 'We'll give you some data and we'll engage. That's worth $5 million.' So we took that, on their honour, and we said, 'Alright. You're not going to put cash on the table. Let's get on with it.' Sure enough, we did a business case. The business case was well received. That business case, North Coast Connect, had the Queensland DTMR at the working level and at the governance level, using their methodology. When it got to Infrastructure Australia, Infrastructure Australia said, 'We're happy to put this on the priority list, but we need the Queensland government—they own the rail network—to be the proponent.' The Queensland government refused to do that, slowing the process yet again. Yet again Queensland Labor refused. Federal Labor were a complete waste of space. They never spoke up and never helped on this project whatsoever.

In came the bid for the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and we unashamedly used that bid to put this project at the centre of transport infrastructure required. Labor eventually said, 'You know what? We understand the need for getting rail up to the Sunshine Coast, but we don't want to do this fast rail thing. We don't want fast rail. It needs to be the same signalling, the same rolling stock and, at the end of the day, the same network as Queensland Rail has today.' Based on that, I put a deal on the table and said, 'I tell you what. Let's do just that. Let's have a connection between Beerwah and Maroochydore, and we'll do those three conditions so long as it is designed in a way to accommodate fast rail in the future.' Eventually they said, 'That sounds good.' We got $1.6 billion. The member for Fisher and I confirmed $1.6 billion, 50 per cent of the project cost. What did Labor then do? 'Uh-oh. Don't know. We've got to think about it—back to the drawing board.' The Albanese government came in. They scrapped the fifty-fifty -partnership with the Queensland government for the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games and suddenly there was an over two-year delay. Now the price has gone up from $3.2 billion to get us to Maroochydore to $7 billion to only do one of three phases, only to Caloundra. Why Caloundra? The state government wants to retain the seat of Caloundra at the election. So here's the deal. They doubled the price and halved the length of the track. Then they turned around and said: 'Guess what? We don't even have enough money to do it.' But they're patting themselves on the back. Thanks, Labor, for nothing.