Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If I am frustrated, as Senator O’Brien says, it is from hearing the same speech by 20 different Labor people today! The unions have obviously stirred them up for this because they see that the huge electoral advantage that the Labor Party and the unions have had for so long is under some threat from a fair set of electoral laws. My interjection was not out of frustration; it was just reminding Senator O’Brien about the number of Labor people who have ended up in jail through rorting the electoral system. You do not have to go much further back than my own home city of Townsville just a few years ago to see a Labor apparatchik end up in jail because of rorts of the electoral system.

But that was not the reason I got to my feet on this adjournment debate. I wanted to again highlight the exceptional contribution that the Howard government has made to infrastructure in my home state of Queensland. Infrastructure in Queensland is generally in a parlous state. The south-east corner of our state is the fastest-growing area of Australia. There are huge increases in the number of people arriving into Queensland every week. The infrastructure simply has not kept pace with that. Most of this infrastructure is the responsibility of the Queensland state government. But naturally in Queensland these days we have given up on any expectation that the Queensland Labor government will do anything when it comes to wise spending of money, be it for infrastructure or for hospitals.

The Queensland hospital system, once the best in the nation, is now synonymous with mismanagement and featherbedding of public servants. The Beattie Labor government has, typically for Labor governments, turned into an art form the spending of money on more bureaucrats and less money on the purpose for which the organisation in there—in the case of health, for helping sick people in Queensland. Our hospital system is creaking and groaning and it is falling over. There are some desperate measures being made by the Queensland Labor government to try to overcome that, but these will be to no avail because the Queensland government continues to put money into bureaucracies and pen-pushing and not put enough into where it really counts—that is, with the doctors and nurses, who do a fabulous job in difficult circumstances but who in recent months have just given up and have left the system in droves. This has brought all sorts of problems and put more imposition on the private system, and to try to get it back Mr Beattie has given huge increases to nurses to try to keep them in the public system. This of course means now that the private sector will have to meet those wage increases, which means that nothing will advance in the system.

But, as bad as they are at health management, the same applies to infrastructure management in Queensland. The last great road-building exercise in Queensland was under the Borbidge-Sheldon government, when the Gold Coast Highway was substantially upgraded. Sure, the ribbon was cut by Mr Beattie, but the hard decisions were taken by the Borbidge-Sheldon government when they were regrettably all too briefly in power a few years ago.

The Queensland government is responsible for a lot of roads. It never puts money into the roads. In fact, out in western Queensland there are roads that are designated as state roads but the Queensland government spends no money on them because there are no votes out there; it is a bit of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. What happens is that local councils, using federal money, are actually having to do work on state roads.

In the recent budget the Howard government provided, and the Treasurer proudly announced, an additional commitment of upwards of $220 million for upgrading the Bruce Highway between Townsville and Cairns. As a Townsville based senator and as one who spends a lot of time in North Queensland, I was delighted with that commitment. Before 30 June, that money will actually be paid to the Queensland government. They will then have three years to spend it. Between now and 30 June, the Queensland government will be entering into an MOU with the Commonwealth government on where that money is to be spent. An amount in addition to that $220 million is going to the Tully flood plain project to flood-proof the road around Tully and Innisfail. It is a commitment which we made in the last budget, actually, and provided quite a deal of money. Additional money has been put into that particular project on the Bruce Highway out of this budget.

The $220 million that is actually being paid to the Queensland government before 30 June this year—that is in a couple of weeks time—is to be spent on priority projects. I am not sure what the Queensland government’s priorities are. Usually they are politically projected and very often, when this happens, with the way the system is, they are not done in the right areas. But I would certainly hope that that money will be spent at least in part on the Mount Low Parkway intersection in Thuringowa City. This is an intersection which is very dangerous. It is an intersection with the main Bruce Highway. The main Bruce Highway is four-lane up until just before the intersection and it then becomes a two-lane highway. The intersection crosses a railway line. It is a real mess and very difficult. It needs a lot of money spent on it. I would certainly hope that that project is one of the priorities that the Queensland government puts forward in its funding bid with the Commonwealth.

Just this week I hosted the Mayor of Thuringowa City Council, Les Tyrell, in a meeting with the honourable Jim Lloyd, the Minister for Local Government, Territories and Roads, and with representatives of Mr Truss’s office to make sure that the spending of money on that project was being very closely looked at. The Mount Low Parkway intersection serves a lot of new areas of Thuringowa city, a very rapidly growing area in the northern part of the Townsville region.

The other project I would like to see given some consideration is the Cardwell Range road upgrade. That road, particularly on the northern approach to the range—the southern approach has been fixed up over a number of years—is very dangerous. There are very often tragic deaths there, the most recent earlier this year, when a young fellow lost control of his vehicle on the range because of its difficult nature. That road needs a lot of work.

About 18 months ago, in April of last year, the Commonwealth gave the Queensland government $1 million to do the planning and costing work for the Cardwell Range road upgrade. When I made some inquiries about this a couple of months ago, I found that the Queensland government had not spent one cent of the $1 million that the Commonwealth had given to Queensland to do the planning and costing work for that roadway. This is the difficulty the Commonwealth is in with roads infrastructure—we do not have engineers or project managers; we provide the money and we rely on the states to do the project, planning and costing work. Unfortunately, as is the case with the Cardwell Range—an instance which is repeated right around Australia—the work is simply not done by the state governments.

I am distressed about the Mount Low Parkway, which I mentioned. When I first became involved in this in February this year I was told by Queensland government officials that they would have the costing and design by 30 June this year. That is in two weeks time. I then heard a couple of weeks ago that it was not going to be ready until the end of this calendar year. Fortunately, when I made a furore about that on the local radio station, the local Labor state member got up and said, ‘We’re going to have it by September.’ I was pleased to hear that. I am going to hold him to that and I hope that that work is done.

These are the difficulties we encounter in dealing with state governments. The Queensland government, as I say, is one of the worst. The Commonwealth is providing lots of money. Queensland, I learnt at estimates, is supposed to contribute to the national highways these days. I was not aware of that; I thought it was all the Commonwealth’s responsibility. I understand that, under AusLink, Queensland have to put in money as well, but you can bet your last dollar that Queensland will not be putting much money into many of these major infrastructure projects, because they are simply not interested in them, particularly when they are in rural and regional Queensland. I congratulate Peter Costello, Jim Lloyd and Warren Truss for their commitment to roads in Queensland. We look forward to getting the infrastructure done eventually. (Time expired)