Start Rockhampton Ring Road group reaches Canberra to meet with Minister

Members of the Start Rockhampton Ring Road group made the trek to Canberra this week to meet with the Transport Minister about the project’s delay. Here’s how their meetings went.

Hundreds gathered to rally the delay of the Rockhampton Ring Road project.

The Federal Government has assured it remains committed to delivering the Rockhampton Ring Road, despite the project being delayed.

It comes as a group of locals from the Start Rockhampton Ring Road Group made it to Canberra on Monday, where they held meetings with all sides of politics.

The group, which included JRT owner Jason Thomasson and SMW Group CEO Jack Trenaman, met with politicians from the LNP and also held a meeting with Labor Senator for Queensland Murray Watt and Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government Minister Catherine King.

After it was announced about two weeks ago the project would be delayed due to an estimated blow out of $700 million, on top of the $1 billion which had been budgeted for the project, the Start Rockhampton Ring Road campaign was launched.

Hundreds gathered to rally the delay of the Rockhampton Ring Road project.

On Friday the group help a rally at Parkhurst, where the group started their drive to Canberra.

After meetings in Canberra on Monday and Tuesday, the group will now stop in Brisbane where they are expecting to meet with Transport Minister Mark Bailey.

Speaking to The Morning Bulletin while making the drive to Brisbane, SMW Group CEO Jack Trenaman said their conversations had been well received in the nation’s capital.

Mr Trenaman said because no work had started on the ring road itself, the $700 million figure was an estimates blowout, but it hadn’t been challenge tested yet.

“We’ve done a bit of ringing around from some large civil contractors and they haven’t had a 70 per cent increase in their input costs, so we believe there may be an area of comfort there for the preferred or whoever did the last estimate and needs to be revised back to local packages,” he said.

“Both Murray Watt and Catherine King took that on board and they certainly took on board commentary we’ve had prior around local content, so it’s genuine local content and not just getting locals there and giving all the work to out of town corporations.

“So it was all very well received.”

SMW Group CEO Jack Trenaman and Jason Thomasson from JRT were part of the group making the trip to Canberra.

Mr Trenaman said the last estimate for the project was causing the hesitancy to start the project.

“I know a few contractors who have price jobs in that mix in larger packages that are about $15 to $20 million cheaper than the larger out of towners,” he said.

“So surely if we go through the pricing models better and ensuring we’re comparing apples with apples, and not just adding an over margin on the job for contingency with labour.

“We’ve got the 600 people in Rookwood and Shoalwater, if they were notified that there were packages starting in February/March next year they’d all hang around, because it’s all similar skills sets.”

The Rockhampton Ring Road project has long been committed to by both sides of federal politics with $800 million being committed by the LNP when they were in government in 2018.

The other $200 million will come from the State Government.

The Labor Party also committed to the project in 2018 when it was in opposition.

At that time the now Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was the opposition spokesman for Infrastructure, Transport, Cities and Regional Development.

In a media statement from 2019, Mr Albanese said a Shorten Labor Government would also invest $800m to build the ring road.

In the same media statement, Mr Albanese said a Labor government would deliver the project and “not just talk about it”.

The group are expected to meet with Queensland Transport Minister Mark Bailey.

He also accused Capricornia MP Michelle Landry of not being able to advance the project while the LNP was in government.

A spokeswoman for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government Minister, Catherine King reaffirmed the government remained committed to building the ring road.

“The Federal Government remains committed to delivering the Rockhampton Ring Road. Every single dollar of the $824 million Australian Government commitment for this project remains within the budget,” she said.

“The Queensland Government put the project out to tender and the lowest cost that came back was $700 million above the $1 billion funding to be provided by the Australian and Queensland Governments. This means that the project is currently underfunded.

“We will work with the Queensland Government to try and bring this project to fruition. However, this is not the only project where there are significant cost overruns from what the previous LNP Government budgeted, and we have been left to clean up a substantial mess in the Infrastructure Investment Pipeline.

“The Fitzroy River Floodplain and Road Planning Study funded by the then Labor Government and released in 2011 backed the Rockhampton Ring Road project. After nearly a decade in Government, the Liberals and Nationals failed to even start construction.”