The State Government must deliver properly engineered and maintained roads.
Some roads in the Gympie electorate are notorious for fatalities, near misses and accidents.
Roads are below standard, and drivers become frustrated and take risks.
For years I have been raising this with the government in correspondence, questions and speeches in the Parliament, and in the media.
It takes months to receive a reply, if at all, and calls for transparency and action either fall on deaf ears, or are ignored.
I am currently sponsoring two petitions which are being run in the electorate about road safety.
Reports are overdue and road maintenance by the State Government is seriously underfunded.
We still haven’t seen the Mary Valley Road Safety Report which was due last December.
Last year a stretch of the Bruce Highway on the northside of Gympie was dug up and repaired only six months after completion of a $17 million job.
They said they didn’t know the condition of the underlying pavement.
They weren’t forging a path over the Blue Mountains in the 1800s.
There would have to be a metre of archives going back 50 years of a mishmash of repairs.
It would be one of the most dug up, patched and re-patched stretches of the Highway.
Just ask the thousands of truckies who travel through there each week.
Tune in to channel 40 and you will soon hear what they say about the continual delays due to stop and go signs.
The Transport Minister who is usually quick to blame someone else was suspiciously quiet.
There was a $5.418 billion backlog in road maintenance funding more than two years ago and it is still predicted to grow. *
The Queensland Auditor General found it should exceed $9 billion by 2027…… only six years away. **
The QAO report was scathing and found that DTMR faces a risk that it will not be able to maintain or improve service standards to meet future needs.
It said the maintenance backlog means that DTMR has to reprioritise works to address safetyrelated defects on its network at the expense of works to renew its assets. (page 6 QAO report).
Instead of blaming everyone else the government should accept responsibility and do its job.
Don’t blame Canberra, don’t blame Covid – don’t blame a Government from six years ago.
No more re-badging, re-announcements, and re-cycling.
We deserve better for our roads and our safety.