Paul Tully has no record of motorway complaints
Further to yesterdays article about the Ipswich Motorway fiasco, a footnote to this story is that Paul Tully, often quoted but rarely relevant local councillor, was quoted as saying his office has received no complaints from locals regarding the Rudd governments plans for the motorway.
Firstly, that’s because you have virtually nothing to do with it Paul. The road is a federal road, and under current agreements, is built, upgraded or maintained by the state government using federal money. The local council has little to do with it.
But more importantly, I think it’s time locals DID write to Paul and tell him what a crock this upgrade really is. He obviously doesn’t read the paper or watch the news too often, or else he would know that most people were in favour of the bypass.
Just for the record, I’ll tell you why that’s the case. Building the bypass would have resulted in almost no disruption to the existing road while it was constructed. Once built, it would have taken most of the traffic off the existing stretch it bypassed, allowing upgrade works to be done on it much more easily if still required.
Okay Paul, your turn. Give it to me in the comments 🙂
June 14th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
I am not sure where the supposed quote of never having received any complaints about the Ipswich Motorway or the Rudd Government’s plans comes from.
In fact, the upgrading of the Ipswich Motorway is the single, biggest source of complaints I have received in the past 5-10 years.
Following the upgrade of the Granard Road, Blunder Road and Centenary Highway interchanges, the most-common complaints have been the Goodna to Gailes stretch involving the notorious “Spaghetti Junction” – personally approved by Russ Hinze in 1985 – and the Goodna to Dinmore stretch – the worst section of any National Highway in Australia.
It was truly a disgrace presided over by the Federal Member for Blair Cameron Thompson who was rightly dumped by the voters last year for his failure to do anything about the Ipswich Motorway since he was first elected in 1998.
Now that Goodna to Gailes and Gailes to Darra are under re-construction, the upgrade from Goodna to Dinmore is currently be designed with construction due to commence in 2009.
The people of Ipswich spoke at the last election over the doomed Goodna Bypass being promoted by the Liberal Party which would have created an even bigger fiasco at Gailes, plus seven roads coming into one at Dinmore as well a two environmentally-unfriendly bridges crossing the Brisbane River and slicing through residential areas of Moggill and Riverview.
It was going to cost at least two and a half times the cost of the upgrading of the Motorway – in fact up to 2 billion dollars more – and was nothing more than an expensive, environmental and social disaster.
I fought the campaign against the Goodna Bypass and will do so again if necessary.
The good thing is that in less than 12 months, the Gailes to Goodna section of the Motorway upgrade will be finished.
And more importantly, the Federal Government announced yesterday that the Darra to Rocklea section will be upgraded as well as part of a new, government initiative.
All good news for the people of Ipswich with two, strong Federal members Shayne Neumann and Bernie Ripoll looking after the city’s interests.