STATE SHOULD TAKE THE $1B

IN the mid 1990s the Gold Coast was slowly strangling to death.

It was simply becoming too difficult to access the city from Brisbane and as a result we faced the very real prospect of traffic gridlock.

In 1996 the then National Liberal minority Government took the decision to build a fast freeway connection between the capital city and the Gold Coast.

It was built in record time with minimum disruption and funded in large part from the asset sale and public listing of Suncorp Metway.

As work progressed the last of the major contracts were signed at the very same executive council meeting that issued the writs for the 1998 election.

I wanted to make sure that the M1 was a done deed and that regardless of the election result the decision to construct the freeway was irreversible.

Nearly 20 years ago it was well under construction and would become for more than a decade the best motorway in Australia, toll free and efficient.

But we all knew in time other solutions would be needed, rail would help but it would not solve the problem.

We are now again staring at gridlock.

Last week the Prime Minister put $1 billion on the table subject to the Queensland Government finding matching funds. As all State Governments do, we want more.

In my term of office, I did the same, on roads, on rail, on housing, on health.

The $1 billion is a considerable amount of money. Queensland should not run the risk of losing it in the hope that something better will come along.

The national repercussions are simply too great. Other states have readily opted into arrangements that we currently refuse to embrace and will put their hands up for our $1 billion if we fail to reach agreement.

Gold Coast taxpayers do not give a fig about an unfixable funding formula. They just want the M1 fixed.

There are times in politics when State Governments having argued their case just have to accept the political and financial reality.

In the spirit of recent events that have changed our city forever the Queensland Government should embrace what is in practical terms a generous and immediate offer of funding from the Prime Minister to fix our emerging infrastructure crisis.