Labor refuses to release new Brisbane tunnel plan

Plans for a new toll tunnel to avoid traffic around Chermside have bipartisan support, across two levels of government, but the details remain secret.

The Miles government has yet to release the results of a community consultation process that Transport and Main Roads Minister Bart Mellish claimed was “overwhelmingly positive”.

The busy intersection of Gympie Road and Hamilton Road at Chermside in Brisbane.Credit: Nearmap

And on Wednesday night, Labor used its majority in state parliament to block a Liberal National Party bid to force the government to release the results of a taxpayer-funded planning study. The RACQ motoring lobby had also called for the study to be released.

Details of the project remain under wraps despite the LNP – in parliament and City Hall – not only supporting the tunnel, but expecting it to be funded in the state budget.

Veteran LNP frontbencher Tim Nicholls said the government had mismanaged previous public transport and roads projects and deserved to lose the election in October.

“It is time to show Labor the door in 2024,” Nicholls told parliament.

Mellish told parliament the study would be released mid-year. He noted the LNP had not offered to help fund the tunnel and was “falsely claiming credit for the project”.

“I can’t really blame them because this is a great project,” the minister said.

The government’s money-making arm, Queensland Investment Corporation, initially investigated the tunnel proposal in secret through what it called Project Polaris.

After the government set aside $35 million for a study, a new entity called North Brisbane Infrastructure was established within QIC to take the project forward. Tolling operator Transurban also put the tunnel on its agenda, hoping to add it to its network of paid routes through Brisbane.

The project has the support of Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner and his LNP-dominated council, which examined similar proposals in trying to determine the fate of the North West Transport Corridor.

While there are no plans to develop the corridor, which runs to the west of the proposed tunnel route, Mellish, one of the local MPs, has ruled out relinquishing any state-owned assets.

That is despite his repeated claims that the LNP has plans for a motorway along the corridor, and Schrinner’s repeated claims that Labor wants to use it for a rail line.

The lord mayor and the LNP campaigned in support of the tunnel at the council election in March.

Under pressure to deal with south-east Queensland’s growing pains, and with no guarantee of funding from the federal Labor government, Premier Steven Miles has called for limits on overseas migration to bring infrastructure plans in line with population growth.

On Wednesday, Miles produced figures to claim “the massive overseas and interstate migration we have seen is directly contributing to congestion, with 229,000 more daily trips on our roads, trains, buses and active networks over the last five years”.

While the Queensland government has not put a figure on an appropriate level of population growth, Miles has welcomed recent commitments from federal leaders Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton to slow international migration.