Amy: 
Minister, in 2020 you announced a corridor study for Montague Road in West End. We have since received notification that that project is being entirely outsourced to the Brisbane City Council. Was it always your intention to delay the project and then hand it over to the Brisbane City Council?


Minister for Transport and Main Roads:
I thank the member for the question but it is certainly misleading in terms of suggesting that I have delayed anything. The fact is that Montague Road is a Brisbane City Council asset. This was an election commitment from the government leading into the 2020 election. We keep our election commitments. The logical way of doing this, rather than overlapping and having us doing studies for something that is an asset owned by the local government, was to ask them to do that work on their asset.

Having been a former councillor myself, I know that their local officers, in terms of the city council road network, will know the ins and outs not just of Montague Road but how it relates to all the other roads. They will have more on-the-ground knowledge in terms of how the road network works than our state people. We have fantastic officers, but we are very concentrated on state controlled roads, which often are the major roads, rather than the local roads. It made sense for us to have another level of government that owns the asset to do that work. They are happy to do that. We will work with them for that improvement.

Montague Road has changed a lot in the past 10 years with all the growth around there, particularly the high-density buildings going in between there and the river. That is putting pressure on
Montague Road. It made sense for the asset owner to do that work, funded by us to make sure that it is done. I look forward to the outcomes of that.

Amy:
Minister, if that is the case, why didn’t you hand it to the Brisbane City Council in 2020 when you announced that money to a Brisbane City Council road?


Minister for Transport and Main Roads:
It was an election commitment by this government and we are fulfilling the election commitment. That is what we do.