Transcript - Radio 4RO Rockhampton with Dales Whyte

DALES WHYTE [HOST]: Joining us in the studio at the moment is the Minister for, amongst other things, Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Local Government, the Honourable Catherine King. Good morning Catherine, how are you?

CATHERINE KING [MINISTER]: I’m well. And that was a very apt song. I haven’t met you yet either, but today we have. So there you go.

DALES WHYTE: The world is a better place.

CATHERINE KING: There you go.

DALES WHYTE: We have been asking people to give us a call, and they’ve been– look, there’s been bulk calls coming in the last 48 hours. Amazingly enough, or unexpectedly, we’ve got a lot of interest in what’s happening with the Bruce Highway. First call we got was soon after we knew you were coming. It was: when is work starting on the Bruce Highway?

CATHERINE KING: Good. Well, the first thing I can say is that today I’m here. The Bruce Highway Advisory Committee is in town today, and we are meeting together to talk about what the next tranche of projects. But I’m here with Brent Mickelberg as well. We’ll be announcing the first tranche of projects under the new $9 billion safety package. There’s 23 projects; 16 of those are construction projects. They will start shortly. They’re ready to go. Literally, the contracts are about to be signed, and a further planning for the next set of tranche of projects is underway. The advisory committee is advising both the Queensland and the federal government about where the problem areas are.

So, on that, we obviously have the motoring groups, we’ve got local representatives of local councils along the highway, truck drivers. And they’re the people who are going to try and tell us where we need to work first, because what we want to do is work on the worst bits of the road first and get those improvements. And that’s what we’re announcing today.

DALES WHYTE: I think that’s fabulous. I think that– I’ve got to say, and I said it earlier on the radio, I would have hoped that somebody from Transport and Main Roads, one of our great public servants, and we do have really good public servants in Queensland, would have been sitting down keeping an idea of the road areas that need working.

CATHERINE KING: Yeah, well they’ve started– so this first lot have come from TMR. So the first lot have come from TMR. And there’s that 15-year action plan for the Bruce that was developed some time ago. So it’s come from there. And then what we’re doing is using the advisory group to actually develop the next tranche of projects. So that’ll just keep rolling. So today, it’s about 300 million worth of projects that are being released, and that money is now being released. And that’s literally– we announced this money in January. And here we are not too far down the track and we’re actually getting on with it.

DALES WHYTE: We– yeah, we certainly do need it. I would like to have seen it done in January three years ago.

CATHERINE KING: [Laughs]

DALES WHYTE: Another question ...

CATHERINE KING: [Interrupts] I think all of it is. But, you know, to be blunt, to be political for a moment, it’s taking a Labor Government to get in and do it.

DALES WHYTE: No, don’t forget, the election coming up. You’re allowed to get in a free plug for yourself.

CATHERINE KING: [Laughs]

DALES WHYTE: Is the immediate money available for both the Bruce Highway and the beef roads?

CATHERINE KING: Yeah. So also what we’re announcing today. So this beef roads has been extraordinarily frustrating to me. So, there’s a $500 million package for beef roads. And in essence, what we’ve been waiting for is the councils in the area with the Queensland Government to basically say, where are the roads that you want us to spend the money on? There’s one thing to say, here, we’re allocating money. So again today, $38 million is the first tranche of that. I’ve signed off on that money. Construction will start on those as well.

DALES WHYTE: Now, we have a little chestnut for you that I know you’re going to love.

CATHERINE KING: [Laughs] OK.

DALES WHYTE: According to the Senate estimates hearing, $440 million of that $7 billion will be spent over the next three years on the Bruce Highway. What happened to the full 7 billion?

CATHERINE KING: Well, yeah. So this is this sort of nonsense. And I understand your local member has been touting this around. So estimates are estimates. Basically, what they do is they estimate. We think that according to where the schedule of where works is up to, this is where money will need to be released. Now, today we’re blowing that out of the water, to be quite honest, because we’re just releasing $300 million in the first three months. So what happens is Queensland will come forward to me. They do what’s called a project proposal report. They say we’re now ready to spend the money and then we just move money into– money moves in and out of the forward estimates all the time. You wouldn’t expect that I would put $7.2 billion in the first year and say, here you go, Queensland, off you go, you just can spend it wherever you like. I’m sure Queensland would love it if I did that.

DALES WHYTE: Well, we just want to spend it on this goat track.

CATHERINE KING: [Laughs] Exactly. Well that’s why we’re doing it. So you’ve got to– you know, they’ve got to do the planning. They’ve got to come to me and say, here’s the report. This is how much it’s going to cost. This is– you know, we’re ready to go to tender. Can you release the money? And we just release the money. And that’s basically what happens with every project. There’s a reason they’re called estimates. They’re estimates of when we think projects will be ready and we move money in and out of them all the time.

DALES WHYTE: The proof will be in the pudding.

CATHERINE KING: Absolutely. Well, we’ve got 300 million being released today ...

DALES WHYTE: [Talks over] I think that’s fabulous.

CATHERINE KING: ... in three months.

DALES WHYTE: Now, this is a really important question. I have driven the Hume Highway on numerous occasions.

CATHERINE KING: Yes.

DALES WHYTE: I used to live in New South Wales. Don’t hold that against me.

CATHERINE KING: [Laughs]

DALES WHYTE: But ...

CATHERINE KING: [Talks over] Well, I’m a Victorian, so I have driven on it too.

DALES WHYTE: My question is, it’s all concrete. It’s pretty much flood proofed. Why are we– why aren’t we doing that here?

CATHERINE KING: Yeah. So– I mean, different roads will need different conditions because of the amount of rain and weather. And again, I’m not an engineering expert, so I rely on the advice of TMR and the engineers to say this is what we’re doing. But one of the things we’ve been focused on– so we’ve got this safety package, this $9 billion, there is a further $10 billion of works that is already underway so that will continue. A lot of that is really big money, around flood proofing and building better. And so you can see that as the road improves slowly but surely a bit more down south that it has up this way, and partly what we’re trying to do now is focus on the central and the north bits of this to get that flood proofing as well. So those big projects will also still continue. And I think– again, Gladstone to Rockhampton we’ve got 188 million. I’ve just released that as well for that section of the road, so that money is in addition to the 9 billion. So, all of that’s happening. In terms of what surface you use and what treatment, really that’s up to the engineers. But our expectation is, from the Commonwealth’s point of view, is that we are building resilience into our infrastructure. There is no point building something and then it– the surface washes away. And it’s frustrating to me, and I know it’s frustrating to many of your listeners when that occurs. So that’s really what we’re focused on.

DALES WHYTE: And that’s– it’s really amazing. Of all the people that called us, it basically came down to the Bruce Highway.

CATHERINE KING: Yeah. Absolutely.

DALES WHYTE: So that gives you an idea of how important that is in our part of the world.

CATHERINE KING: Yeah. Well, it’s your major– like, it’s the only way you can travel around, between communities. It– absolutely. And we’ve understood that, we’ve always understood it. And it’s why we’re focused on trying to get this improved.

DALES WHYTE: You’ve brought your bucket of money with you. What else are you releasing today?

CATHERINE KING: Well, today also– so the Rocky Ring Road has been a really important project. I think if you’ve heard the Prime Minister talk about it, this is a project he promised back, I think with Kirsten Livermore way, way, way back. It’s taken a long time to get this project off the road. When we came to government, the tenders had come in at about 700 million more than were expected because it had been so delayed, frankly, under the previous government. It was going to cost more, we had to take some time to try and work out, well, how do we find that money? Can we get costs down at all? We found that money. There has been another cost pressure that would have been– the Queensland Government has reported. So, we’re adding another 200 million, taking the Commonwealth’s contribution to the Rocky Ring Road to $1.4 billion. It’s a big ring road. And so that money is being released again today as well. So making sure there was a view that we could scope it back a bit and not put that money in, we took the decision, we’ll put the 200 million in and the full scope of the Rocky Ring Road will proceed.

DALES WHYTE: Now, if I was a little bit dubious of politicians...

CATHERINE KING: [Talks over] No, you’re not like that at all. No, never. [Laughs]

DALES WHYTE: Never, not me. One could say, oh, this is just spending in time for the election. Why didn’t it happen earlier?

CATHERINE KING: Well, again, the cost overrun for that has only just been identified, so I didn’t know about it a year ago. If I’d known about it a year ago, we would have dealt with it. So it’s only just come to light that this cost pressure is there so we’re just doing that. In terms of the Bruce Highway, we’ve been working with both the previous Queensland Government and the new Queensland Government on what we could do next. We had 10 billion already on the table. Those projects were proceeding and continue to go. I’d always like them to happen much more quickly, to be blunt. I think it would be good if they happened much more quickly and we’d been working with them about what next, what do we need to do? And again, we sort of do it on a project by project basis. And so we needed them to come to us to say what it was that was needed. And once they did that, we stepped up.

DALES WHYTE: I’ve kept my questions to last. So are you– I’m running out now. I’m out of time, that is. 15-year plan for the Bruce Highway. We can’t wait 15.

CATHERINE KING: No, you definitely can’t. So what we’ve said with this 9 billion safety package, and the focus of this is doing what’s called– there’s a star rating system, but that basically looks at the safety of each of the big highways in particular. And it says that, really, the best– safest road is a five-star road. And that’s where you’ve got, dual lanes separated …

DALES WHYTE: Much like the Hume Highway.

CATHERINE KING: Yeah. Like that. Like– I’m trying to think, even in my home district, the Western Highway is a bit safer, but it’d probably be around four stars. It’s three in some parts as well, and down to two in others as well. So really what you’re trying to do is look at where is every single part of this that is at a two star, and we want to lift that up to three. If we can get it higher, we will. It will depend on the treatment. So you’ve got to widen shoulders. You’ve got to put grade separation in place. So you’re going to start to see that, we’ve said we’ll do that in eight years. That’s the plan is to get that done in eight years. If we can get it done sooner, we will. You’ve got a bit of a workforce shortage up here, unfortunately, at the moment. And there’s a lot happening, building everywhere. Olympics is going to put some strain on the labour force as well.  And we’d like to get it done.

DALES WHYTE: And we want some of the Olympics up here.

CATHERINE KING: Well, that’ll be a matter for the Queensland Government’s review. You’ll be– I mean, you know it’s always tricky with these things. What you want to do is be able to make sure that you’ve got some facilities for people, for places to train, that you’ve got some legacy afterwards so that you’ve got sporting fields and facilities that people can use afterwards.

DALES WHYTE: Okay, here we go. The final question: is all this money going to happen no matter who wins the election?

CATHERINE KING: Yeah. So this is all in the budget. So the announcement we made of the 7.2 billion and then the Queensland Government made 1.8, that is already in the budget. But of course, when you’ve got an opposition looking for $351 billion of cuts, I can’t guarantee what they might cut. Let’s hope it’s not the Bruce.

DALES WHYTE: Well, I don’t think anyone would be game to cut the Bruce. And …

CATHERINE KING: Not if you’re on the case, mate. No.

DALES WHYTE: With respect to Peter Dutton, he is a Queenslander, so he knows better.

CATHERINE KING: I don’t know, he got confused between Yeppen and Yeppoon, so I don’t know about that.

DALES WHYTE: [Laughs] Oh well okay. Point taken. Well done. Minister King, thank you so much for your time. It’s always a pleasure and hopefully you won’t be a stranger.

CATHERINE KING: Never. I will come back anytime you’d like me to.