Gold Coast Light Rail

6 Sep 2017 9:10 AMMichael Hart

Gold Coast Light Rail

Mr HART (Burleigh—LNP) (10.55 pm): The second stage of the light rail on the Gold Coast is well underway, as we all know. Unfortunately, those on the other side of the House claim credit for it. I can tell members on that side of the House that when we were in government we had that well and truly planned. This was sitting in the filing cabinet of one of our ministers’ offices waiting for those opposite to find it and drag it out. Now we move to the third stage of the light rail and it is the Gold Coast—

Mr BAILEY: Mr Speaker, I rise to a point of order. This is the adjournment debate, not stand-up comedy.

Mr SPEAKER: There is no point of order.

Mr HART: It is late at night and the member right up the back of the chamber is feeling a bit of relevance deprivation, I think.

The Gold Coast City Council has led the planning charge on the third stage of the light rail, and I commend it for that. The third stage of the light rail is now slated to come from Broadbeach to my electorate in Burleigh and then beyond, towards the airport. I support light rail to the airport. It needs to be at our major transport hub on the Gold Coast which is the Gold Coast airport. It needs to link up with heavy rail. It needs to make sense to people. It needs to take people from where they are to where they want to get to. However, I do not support light rail going down the highway through Palm Beach. Palm Beach is way too narrow for light rail. There will be far too many resumptions of properties and disruption to the people of Palm Beach, and it will mean no on-street parking through Palm Beach. That is just not acceptable to the people of Palm Beach. I commend Karen Rolls, who has been running the campaign in Palm Beach against light rail coming through Palm Beach. Originally the council had a plan to take light rail down the esplanade through Burleigh. We managed to stop that, and Sue Macrossan was involved in that process. The Gold Coast City Council came up with a bright scheme to do that.

The council has now gone through a consultation process and it has identified where the final stop of the light rail might be when it gets to Burleigh. The consultation process was completely flawed. There were only two options, with the third option being ‘I did not care which one of the first two options it was’, and the second option not being viable. Therefore, the people chose the first option, which was the only choice they had.