GYMPIE BYPASS FINALLY OPENS
In April 2018 I joined with former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Michael McCormack MP, the Member for Hinkler Keith Pitt, the Editor of the Gympie Times Shelley Strachan, and my good mate and former Queensland Police Service Forensic Crash Investigator Steve Webb in Gympie to commit $800 million to the 26km Gympie bypass that today is now open to traffic.
This is literally groundbreaking infrastructure that has now transformed one of the deadliest sections of the Bruce Highway into one of the safest. This four lane divided highway will improve Gympie’s amenity by removing heavy haulage from the town’s centre and benefit everyone travelling between Cooroy and Tiaro, and beyond.
Securing funding for this project wasn’t an easy win. I worked with the community including people who shared their own personal experiences along this notorious stretch to take the case to then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Treasurer Scott Morrison.
Shelley Strachan organised a community petition, I worked with the Wide Bay Burnett Regional Development Australia Committee on a plan, and the Wide Bay Burnett Regional Organisation of Councils to bring Mayors from the Fraser Coast, Gympie, the South Burnett, North Burnett and Bundaberg Regional Councils all to Canberra to convince the naysayers that the project was needed now.
Sadly, it took the tragic toll of crashes and serious injuries to win the fight, and today more than six years after the funding was announced, I remember them and their families for their losses.
We can all now travel safely on this new section, but the danger of the Bruce Highway in Wide Bay will remain for so long as we have unforgiving lanes of opposing directions of traffic travelling at speed without concrete barrier separation.
When the first sod was turned on the Gympie bypass in September 2020, I warned that it wasn’t a shiny shovel day because the State Labor Government refused to support the four lane Tiaro bypass and didn’t believe it should be built to the same safe standard as the Gympie bypass.
Funding for the four lane Tiaro bypass was committed in 2021 yet we are still yet to see major construction start, and there are no plans, and no funding committed to make the remaining sections between Curra and Tiaro and Tiaro and Maryborough four lanes, but the State Labor Government spent $311,000 on a campaign party on the Gympie bypass. This would have been better spent on planning for the next stages to extend the four lanes north.
At the last election I warned that the greatest threat to the Tiaro bypass would be the election of an Albanese Labor Government. In the time since Labor was elected the Albanese Government has failed to fund any new substantial projects to make the Bruce Highway safer through Wide Bay. This needs to change and I am committed to getting the job done.
