ADJOURNMENT

Mr WILLCOX (Dawson) (19:49): I rise today to speak about the Bruce Highway. Mr Speaker, you would understand about the Bruce Highway, being from Queensland. It's the main highway that connects Brisbane to Cairns, circa 1,600 kilometres of stretch.

This vital piece of infrastructure, this vital highway, is how our farmers get their produce to market. It's how we get our supplies up from the city. It's how our families drive around.

It's how our families deliver children to school. But, unfortunately, this has been neglected by the Albanese Labor government. There's been no new money in the first term.

It's simply not acceptable. Yet I was really pleased that before the election the Prime Minister made an election commitment of $7.2 billion to go towards the highway. I thought this was really good, and I'm on the record of actually thanking the Prime Minister.

But, unfortunately, less than two days after that, the Minister for Finance, Katy Gallagher, said, 'There's not any money available.' The Prime Minister rechecked that and said, 'Yes, there's money available.' The finance minister said, 'No, there's not.' Then we had the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government say, 'Well, no, the money is available.' So, at this point, we were very confused.

Is the money available? Is the money not available? Then we had Senate estimates.

Senate estimates revealed that there is only $432 million available over the next three years. Now, $7.2 billion is $7,200 million, and there's only $432 million available over the next three years. There's a lot of drinking silver between those two numbers.

How is that going to work? We're used to the Prime Minister telling a few porky pies, such as the '$275 better off on the power bill'. That didn't happen.

But we really need this money for the Bruce Highway. We need centre line separation. The pavement—we have a conga line of potholes, one after the other, and we've got a wet season approaching.

The fog lines are too narrow. Because of the centre line separation, if we have a car travelling north at 100 kilometres an hour and then a car travelling south at 100 kilometres an hour and they have a head-on collision, that's like a 200 kilometre an hour running straight into a brick wall, and, unfortunately, people are losing their lives. In my electorate of Dawson, which runs from Mackay through to Townsville, it's rated as the worst section in the whole of the Bruce Highway.

It's not acceptable. I've invited the Minister for Transport and Main Roads, the Hon. Brent Mickelberg, joined by Minister Amanda Camm, from the Crisafulli government, to come to my electorate, which they did.

I'm really happy that they did. I showed them the Farleigh Habana Road intersection with the Bruce Highway. This is a problem.

There have been accidents there. Now, with the increasing traffic from the quarry and the cement works, there are a lot of heavy vehicle movements around there. I've called on them to please prioritise that and move that intersection forward.

They've said that they will take that on board, so I'm really hoping that the state will then convince the Albanese Labor government to come up with this money and make that intersection a little safer. The other thing the Albanese Labor government changed is that it has always been, over a long history, 80 per cent funded by the federal government and 20 per cent funded by the state government.

Unfortunately, the Albanese Labor government changed that to a fifty-fifty arrangement. But I'm really pleased that with the $7.2 billion, although it's not there, they did promise to bring back the 80-20 arrangement. So, providing that money comes back, let's see how that goes.

I think it's time that this government stopped giving us potholes in policy and started paving the way to progress. The Bruce Highway shouldn't be a road to ruin; it should be a road to results. Please, Mr Albanese—you are the Prime Minister.

Make good on your promise—at least make good on this one. Put the money back into the Bruce, because lives depend on it. It's so important to my electorate of Dawson.