Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Peter Costello. This is $74 billion of government debt in a state—Queensland—where there has been the greatest boom since World War II. With the biggest mining boom and the biggest receipts boom in our state’s history, still there is $74 billion of debt. No wonder the federal opposition is so absolutely scared of what is going to happen to this nation as the Rudd government leads us down the same horrible path.

What has happened? We have dropped our credit rating in Queensland from AAA—we were the first state to get it and we were the first state to lose it—to AA+. What is happening now? Our borrowings are costing more and more. All those infrastructure projects—such as the Gold Coast desalination plant, worth $350 million; the northern pipeline, worth $400 million; and the Traveston dam, worth $500 million—are on hold. Some of them are not worth it, but all of them are on hold. This has been an absolute disaster for the Queensland people. We lost our AAA credit rating. I should add this because it is very important—