The Federal LNP Government’s plan to invest in Stage II of the Gladstone Port Access Road comes five years after it scrapped funding allocated for the project by the former Labor Government.
The Gladstone Port Access Road should have already been built.
In the 2011-12 Budget the Federal Labor Government provided funding for the project. But in 2014, at the behest of the Member for Flynn, Ken O’Dowd, the LNP withdrew that investment.
Now, having wasted the intervening years, Prime Minister Scott Morrison plans to restore the funding and pretend it is new.
This is classic LNP political strategy: cut investment, restore it before an election and hope no-one will notice the deception.
The record of Ken O’Dowd and the LNP on Central Queensland roads is clear: years of inaction, excuses and funding cuts.
It will take a Shorten Labor Government to invest in the rail and road projects regional communities need to drive economic growth and job creation.
For more than five years the Coalition has cut infrastructure investment around the nation, particularly for regional Australia.
If Scott Morrison is re-elected, the situation will worsen, with the Government’s own Budget documents showing he will cut Federal grants to the states each and every year from $7 billion in 2017/18 to $4.5 billion in 2021-22.