Melanie Christiansen and Rosemary Odgers

February 18, 2007

A RUDD Labor government would open the Treasury pursestrings to fix southeast Queensland’s road, water and port bottlenecks.

As Labor eyes key Queensland seats ahead of this year’s election, Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd is promising a “threshold” change in a new Major Cities program.

He has pledged to inject billions of dollars into projects to help fast-growing cities to cope with their infrastructure needs.

It comes as Premier Peter Beattie urges the Federal Government to reconsider funding a revised version of the 70-year-old Bradfield Scheme which would redirect rivers in water-rich northern Queensland to flow through western rivers and pipelines and end up in the Murray-Darling system.

“We believe that the national government has responsibilities in this area and you can’t just pass the buck to other levels of government,” Mr Rudd said.

“You have huge population pressures here in southeast Queensland … but infrastructure burdens flow from that and we think the national government should pitch in.”

In his first significant commitment under the program, Mr Rudd yesterday pledged $408 million towards the construction of the western corridor recycled water pipeline. The 200km pipeline, already under construction, will pump recycled water from treatment plants in Brisbane to power stations, industry and the Wivenhoe Dam.

While the Federal Government has expressed support for the pipeline, it is yet to commit any funding, saying the Queensland Government has so far failed to submit a business plan for the project.