Editorial: Flush with cash, Treasurer must be ready to help
Treasurer Cameron Dick’s message today must be: “Queensland, I’m here to help”, writes the editor.
Opinion
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Treasurer Cameron Dick has laid his own golden egg courtesy of his super-profits tax on miners.
He needs to today ensure the benefits are delivered across the state to those people and projects most in need of their share of the windfall.
The true value of Mr Dick’s golden egg will be revealed when he stands in parliament to deliver his Budget today. But Queensland Resources Council estimates have the windfall pegged at $13.6bn – about $5.3bn more than would have been the case had the royalties scheme not been changed – without any proper consultation with the sector – in last year’s state budget.
Mr Dick has already said some of it will be spent paying down the state’s $15bn or so of debt. This is prudent. But this golden egg is only being laid because of historically high coal prices (largely because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine).
Debt, meanwhile, is just a part of life. We would therefore argue that as well as delivering one-off cost-of-living relief as Mr Dick has already flagged, that the rest of the cash is allocated towards projects that will deliver real benefits into the future.
Some should be well-considered investments in renewable energy projects, as a down payment on what will inevitably be the way our power needs are delivered in the future. But other cash should be allocated towards projects that will protect the lifestyle we expect even as our population grows.
New government projections released yesterday forecast that the state’s population will grow from
5.2m to 9.2m by 2071. Mr Dick described those forecasts as “a useful tool for long-term planning”. He should today put his money where his mouth is.
The $35m we already know will be set aside in today’s Budget for a detailed investigation into a new road tunnel between the Airport Link at Kedron and the Bruce Highway at Carseldine is a case in point. This will essentially create a highway through the middle of the northern suburbs, taking congestion off Gympie Rd and delivering the city-to-coast benefits already on offer on the southside. It is overdue, but great news that the state is committed to deliver it before the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games here.
The full benefit of this project to the state’s capital city is shown by a map posted on the Premier’s social media accounts on Sunday – which reveals it as perhaps the last missing link in the network of highways and tunnels that include the Ipswich, Gateway and Logan Motorways, the Clem 7, Legacy Way and Airport Link tunnels, and the M1 and Bruce Highway. It is the road network that will be needed by a capital city smack bang in the middle of a region that will soon be home to as many people as the two big southern capitals.
The government also clearly needs to deliver more to public transport. Its commitment to deliver heavy passenger rail into the heart of the Sunshine Coast is still to be properly tested. The necessary proposal is stuck in the “feasibility” phase as doubts grow over whether the new line will ever extend north beyond the Labor-held seat of Caloundra to service Kawana and Maroochydore, as it should.
Similarly, on the Gold Coast there is a necessary extension of its very successful light rail network south to the city’s airport. In Brisbane, too, there is work to be done – and the state should assist the council in delivering its eastern busway, for example.
None of this should mean the regions miss out, though. The ongoing need to upgrade the Bruce Highway will forever be something that treasurers of Queensland will have to remain focused on. But there are plenty of other less iconic but just as important projects that demand some attention.
The state government clearly also needs this year to do much more delivering of social housing. That it has been caught out being the worst of the states in this space is deplorable for a government that represents the Labor Party. The $322m extra that will be set aside to deliver 500 additional such homes only just starts to scratch the surface of the unmet need. That one in 17 Queenslanders currently have unmet housing needs is a disaster that should be right at the top of this government’s to-do list. It is a challenge that demands the state joins forces with the private sector to tackle. And yet sadly this is a government still focused more on its ideological battle with property developers than on real people who are doing it tough, at least based on Public Works Minister Mick de Brenni’s determination to push ahead with plans to regulate the sector. To say this is a wrong approach is an understatement.
Having said all of that, we can see by today’s exclusive that the state will be funding the kindy year for every Queensland child from 2024 that there will be a genuine focus in the Budget on relieving the cost of living pressures facing households. This is, of course, welcome.
It is clear that the next two years will be challenging forms of Queenslanders.
The latest reminder of that came on Friday with the revelation that those in the regions will cop the biggest power price hike in the nation.
Mr Dick’s message today must be: “Queensland, I’m here to help.”
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