Carbon tax puts brakes on Pacific Highway upgrade
12th July, 2011
“THE carbon tax will add at least another $350 million to the cost of the promised duplication of the Pacific Highway from Sydney to the Queensland border,” Leader of The Nationals and Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Warren Truss said in Port Macquarie today.Mr Truss said two separate studies have shown that Labor’s new carbon tax will more than 5% to the cost of building roads.
“We already know, both from revelations in Senate Estimates just after the Federal Budget and Infrastructure Australia’s Communicating the Imperative for Action report of 4 July 2011, that up to $7 billion extra is needed to build the Pacific Highway after current funding runs out in 2014-15.
“With the carbon tax going up every year, that means more than $350 million extra also has to be found – on top of the missing billions – before the project can be completed.
“The highway upgrade was a key commitment by the Prime Minister to woo the support of federal Independent MP Rob Oakeshott last September, as the highway runs through the electorate of Lyne.
“This was reinforced when Mr Oakeshott sought further assurances during Question Time on 21 October 2010, to which the Prime Minister responded:
‘I can very much commit to him that the Government is committed to duplicating the Pacific Highway by 2016’.
“Labor’s chronic mismanagement and habitual deception has turned this major infrastructure project of national importance into another broken promise. The carbon tax makes it all the more certain that this project will not be finished anytime close to 2016.
“It is the latest in the series of overblown Gillard promises that have not been delivered. Given the sheer scale of the funding shortfall, compounded by the carbon tax, it was never remotely likely.
“Should the Coalition win the next federal election we will work with NSW to duplicate the Pacific Highway as quickly as possible and make it a key priority under the AusLink program.
“The Coalition will honour all commitments to the project and make more funding available as the federal budget is restored to health after the years of wasteful and reckless Labor mismanagement.”
[ENDS]
