“A NEW station and new trucks for Boonah Auxiliary Fire Brigade are the only good things in a State Budget that has ‘precious little’ allocated to Scenic Rim roads and infrastructure,” reports Member for Scenic Rim, Jon Krause.
While significant disaster recovery funding was allocated to the Cunningham Highway following the 2019 bushfires, no new funding was assigned in the current Budget to upgrades of other sections needing to be repaired.
“The same goes with Boonah Ipswich Road and Boonah Beaudesert Road,” Mr Krause said, “there will be some maintenance work undertaken as a matter of course but things like work to improve the Coulson crossing is still not in the Budget.
“The work has been spoken about for six maybe seven years, but TMR [Department of Transport and Main Roads] and the government still haven’t put it in the Budget.
“Boonah Rathdowney Road and the horrific stretch four-and-a-half kilometres long west of Musgrove Bridge coming out of Rathdowney has missed out too.
“I have been going on about this for several years now and TMR is aware of it but again, where are the priorities for the government ...they’ve had this $10 billion windfall, yet projects like that can’t even make it into the planning stage, and there is precious little in the way of road infrastructure.”
Mr Krause said he’d been “pushing for funds” to improve the Boonah Auxiliary Fire Station for several years and was glad to see the fight had paid off.
“While that station has served us well, it’s on the older side and one of the oldest stations in Queensland ... our community deserves better than that,” he said.
“The $2.5 million allocation to upgrade the station will help it go into the future knowing the next generation of fire trucks will fit in it.
“Over the years I have supported the Mount Alford Rural Fire Brigade as well so it is good to see they’ve had $700,000 allocated in the face of a Budget that otherwise lets Queensland down.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         ”He said as a local Member it was ‘really pleasing’ some of the things he had been lobbying for were being taken notice of and funded, but there was still a lot more that needed to be done.
“This budget is a budget of chaos and crisis in my view,” he said.
“The revenue the government is getting hasn’t been higher, but the services have never been worse especially in the health area, the energy sector, police and youth justice...the crisis are never ending.”