By Dave Riley
BRISBANE — Despite the biggest anti-government rallies since Labor came to power in Queensland, the controversial South Coast Motorway is to be built. Expressions of interest will be sought from private firms to design, construct, maintain and operate the road, which is estimated to cost up to $700 million. The capital cost will be recovered from tolls set by the roadway's owners.
The regional backlash against the state government's determination to build the new road, rather than rely on upgrading the existing Pacific Highway linking Brisbane with the Gold Coast, is sure to impact on its electoral prospects. Already Logan VETO — the local anti-motorway coalition — has warned that five marginal seats in the tollway's path will be targeted.
In an attempt to head off the state Department of Transport's commitment to the project, VETO launched an alternative transport plan at a mass rally a month ago. Its MFM (Multi Function Motorway) proposal involved the widening of the existing Pacific corridor rather than merely upgrading it. Instead of a system of rigidly determined traffic lanes, the MFM allowed for flexible transport solutions which integrated motor vehicle traffic with a mass transit system.
The government wouldn't hear of it and vilified the alternative proposals as unviable.
At the centre of the dispute is a section of the proposed route which bisects the Daisy Hill Forest. After environmentalists and local residents insisted that such a roadway through natural habitat would decimate the unique koala population there, the government settled on the solution of building a 2.8 km tunnel — now estimated to cost $53 million — under the forest.
While the engineering implications of the proposed route through the forested Â鶹´«Ã½ are staggering, the Labor administration has not baulked at any of the problems involved. Brisbane car owners are to get their new road to the Gold Coast whether they will use it or not.
The vigorous commitment to the project may seem bizarre given the state government's willingness to concede to protests against similar planned road works elsewhere in South East Queensland. But the importance of the South Coast Motorway is the logic of its creation.
With the rationale of the Hilmer Report joyously endorsed at the recent premiers' conference, restructuring and planning in the region are very definitively geared to corporatisation. Queensland Rail is scheduled to be corporatised in June, and the local bus system is already being restructured along competitive lines: the Goss government is establishing a transport plan for south-east Queensland that rests firmly on "user pays". Even the roadways will no longer be a free ride.
This is the message of the state government's SEQ 2001 Project, designed to put together an overall plan which will manage growth in south-east Queensland over the next 20 years.
While departmental boffins insist that change will proceed through ongoing community consultation, the bitterness of thousands of residents along the motorway's proposed route suggests a totally different process. As VETO spokesperson David Keogh told Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly recently, "Democracy is dying. The accountability that Goss promised in 1989 is history. It's just like Son of Joh."
VETO's campaign has been varied and imaginative. With a local mass base among residents and businesses it has organised a succession of rallies attended by thousands. In an extraordinary move for a community organisation, it invested $30,000 and employed a professional marketing company to launch its MFM proposal and run a continuing publicity campaign.
Presently, Keogh is running for a position on the council of the Royal Automobile Club of Queensland, which has backed the government's transport plan for south-east Queensland without consulting its membership.
With land resumptions along the proposed route already proceeding, it is towards the coming state election that VETO will now turn. Alone among all parliamentary parties, the ALP has committed itself to the project. On this issue, even the Liberals sound good.
It will be interesting to monitor how the electoral backlash the ALP is sure to suffer in the suburbs south of the CBD will be harnessed.