Fiona's speech - Connecting SEQ 2031

Click here to see Fiona's speech in Parliament on 25 October 2011.


Ms SIMPSON (Maroochydore—LNP) (6.06 pm): This document that the government has tabled isnot a real plan; it is a con job. In fact, it should be renamed ‘Conning SEQ 2031’, not ‘Connecting SEQ 2031’ because there is no connection to reality and no connection to any construction plan to deliver on any meaningful targets. I have to ask myself: how many government spin doctors does it take to build a road in Queensland? Given that that is what this government does so well—spinning the story, not constructing in a timely and cost-effective way—how many government spin doctors does it take to build a road in Queensland? Absolutely none, because they are useless in respect of building roads. However, they are very good at trying to give the minister a media opportunity rather than actually having a substantive plan.
 
We have seen SEQIPP and the South East Queensland Regional Plan, which was supposed to be the active component of delivery for these integrated plans, and it has now morphed into QIP. But what hasthe government done? It has taken out the time frames and the cost structures because it kept blowing them; it could not get a handle on how to actually deliver the real infrastructure. Without that action plan, without a construction pipeline, this integrated transport plan is a complete joke. I believe that Queenslanders have seen enough of the way this government operates to see through it. They have had a gutful of it. We have heard already about the real impacts of seeing people transition to public transport. On the government’s own figures, we have seen a fall-off in the number of people in real terms using public transport in areas where we need to see people shifting to real and effective public transport.

I want to address my remarks towards my own area of the Sunshine Coast. If honourable members believe this document—if they believe, once again, the promises of a range of pieces of infrastructure that are now listed without any time frames and without any hard data on the cost—the government would have them believe it had done the planning. It cannot even build a bus station that was promised some years ago, a bus station that is the very hub of the Sunshine Coast. This is not brain surgery; it is pretty basic stuff—building a bus station at the hub of the Sunshine Coast. Government members pulled out the glossy brochures for that last year, too, and they told people that they had done the planning and they were going to get underway and start construction. They bought a number of properties and they tipped out the tenants. There are empty properties where this bus station was supposed to go. But what has happened since then? They have announced, ‘We have to go out and do the plan again. We are going to consult on the design’—the design that they announced last year they would have done more than 12 months earlier. Meanwhile, tenants have gone and so has the rent in respect of the properties that were acquired. This is a government that is rudderless with regard to the most basic issue of construction delivery.

Who is going to believe that this is an integrated transport plan? Nobody! This government cannot even construct a bus station at the hub of the Sunshine Coast. This document says:

Centres access hierarchy

Maroochydore is the logical regional hub for the Sunshine Coast as it is the principal activity centre and is forecast to accommodate 18,000 employees by 2026.

Meanwhile, at the existing bus station someone is paid to stand behind the buses to make sure that  nobody is run over because the buses have to back out in order to transition out of the bus station. It is  pretty well at capacity. It is such a basic bit of infrastructure. Who is going to believe everything those  opposite have listed here will occur? Those opposite do not have a plan unless they can show a  construction time frame and a cost.

I think that the shock is that most of SEQIPP, which has now been sucked into the QIP, has never
had ‘P’ ratings done. It has never had the probabilities around the processes to put in place the business  plans for certainty. This is basic stuff that people in business would expect if there was to be a real pipeline  of work. Connecting SEQ 2031 is a con job. It is little different from the draft that we released when it was  leaked 12 months ago. Here we are today with a new glossy print of what those opposite had leaking  around the traps 12 months ago, which is not much different other than being printed and glossed. One  has to ask: what does this government do? All it does is a PR spin job rather than actual and meaningful  pipelines of work for construction so that Queensland and South-East Queensland does not grind to a halt.