Just over a month ago, the people of Central Queensland were shocked that the new Labor Government had scrapped next year’s funding to construct the Rockhampton Ring Road. The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, had promised before the election that the Ring Road was “guaranteed” and in his first budget broke that promise.
The day after the announcement the local Labor MP for Rockhampton, Barry O’Rourke, went on radio and defended the decision. He claimed that cost blowouts meant we could not build the Ring Road at the moment. Funny that cost blowouts never seem to stop projects in Brisbane like the Cross River Rail.
Labor Senator Murray Watt won the award for the most bizarre justification to slash funding to CQ roads saying that “workforce shortages in CQ after 10 years of the LNP were so severe”. Guilty as charged Murray. The LNP did create a lot of jobs in CQ over the past decade.
But the CQ community did not accept Labor’s lame excuses. Local businesses established a new group “Start Rockhampton Ring Road”. Shirts, hats and signs were printed. A rally which was held and attended by 500 locals. And a convoy, which I joined, travelled all the way to Canberra to speak to Ministers and Parliamentarians from all sides of politics.
Their efforts delivered rewards. While they did not attend the Ring Road rally, within weeks the local Labor MPs shifted their language. No longer were they defending their own parties decision to put the Ring Road on the backburner. Now they claimed they were fighting for more money.
Last week we seem to have had a partial victory. Speaking after National Cabinet, the Queensland Premier said she had won the agreement of the PM to put up more funding for the Ring Road so that it could be fast tracked. She gave credit to the local Labor MPs but did not mention the fight of the local CQ community.
From their behaviour over the past month, you can only conclude that everything is politics for the Labor party. They only fought for their community when they were forced to do so by community pressure. It is the local community that have won this extra funding, not the local Labor MPs.
Michelle Landry, Colin Boyce and I were alongside the community from the start. We held a press conference on the morning that it was announced quietly to the media without telling local suppliers. We didn’t need to speak to our party bosses to decide what we should do. We knew that we had to fight for our local community and we did that from day one.
While extra funding from the Federal Government is welcome it is far short of what is needed. The Premier gave no figures of the funding amounts last week but it seems just an extra $80 million will be provided.
The Rockhampton Ring Road’s costs have increased by $600 million so where is the other $520 million going to come from?
While I want the Rockhampton Ring Road to start, the more important goal is to have the Rockhampton Road finished. Only then will we get rid of the 2300 trucks that go through our town every day. Only then will it be safer for parents to drop their kids off at the 4 schools on the existing Bruce Highway.
So the Labor party needs to tell us when will the road finish? After Labor slashed funding in the budget, the road was not due to finish until the end of this decade. We should not have to wait until the end of the decade for a safe road while Brisbane gets a Cross River Rail, a casino and untold infrastructure for the Olympics.
We will have to keep fighting for a while yet to get Labor on the side of our community.
