The car park at Ferny Grove station, in Brisbane’s outer suburbs, had been overflowing for years. For residents in the growing mortgage-belt suburbs in the Samford Valley and surrounds, hopping on a train is the quickest way into Brisbane. But it’s impossible to get a park after 7.30am.
In early 2019, the federal member for Dickson, Peter Dutton, came to the rescue. Facing a real chance of losing his seat, Dutton promised $11 million to redevelop the car park, the funds allocated under the Morrison government’s Urban Construction Fund. He also managed to get in a crack at the state Labor government.
“If Annastacia Palaszczuk isn’t prepared to put in any money, her government can plan and build extra parking with this federal funding,” he said in a pre-budget media release.
“The money is on the table. All the Palaszczuk government has to do is get cracking and provide new parking spaces as quickly as possible.”
Billboards started appearing around the suburbs spruiking Dutton’s gift to the electorate.
But there were a few problems. The Labor government was already funding the development. Two years earlier, Mark Furner, the ALP state member for Ferny Grove, had secured $9.1 million from the Palaszczuk government for a redeveloped car park. Dutton’s opportunistic pre-election cash splash was the first he’d heard of the federal MP taking an interest in an issue that had long plagued his constituents.
“You’d think someone worth their salt would know the needs of their constituents,” Furner told Crikey.
Furner also recalls telling Dutton the site he proposed was in an area most locals know as flood-prone.
“It’s frequently underwater,” long-term resident Hugh Childers told Crikey.
Of course, no local MP is going to reject extra federal infrastructure, no matter who it comes from. Dutton eventually backed down from his initially proposed location. But his intervention meant the development application to refurbish the existing car park had to be resubmitted — delaying the planned start date from late 2018.
It took more than two years for other problems with the proposal to arise. The Ferny Grove redevelopment was listed in a bombshell Australian National Audit Office report as among the 47 projects where the Coalition had ignored department recommendations and funnelled money towards Coalition-held seats or targets. Most of the money under the scheme went to Victoria. But marginal Dickson was one of the few areas in Queensland to have a win.
The auditor-general also found the $11 million allocated to the Ferny Grove redevelopment was a whopping 104% above the project’s benchmark cost. It added up to a total of $80,972 for each parking space, making the project one of the most over-funded in the country.
Meanwhile, thanks to the pandemic and the overlap between the state and federal governments, no work has yet been done on extending the car park.
“There was supposed to be something happening by the end of June,” Childers said. “It’s gone off the boil with COVID.”
Locals aren’t really sure what’s happening and when, but the project is expected to complete … in mid-2023.
As a resident of Samford, I was deeply suspicious of Peter Dutton’s huge roadside signs. The first version on the billboard beside the Boy Scouts campground on Samford Road leading to the Ferny Grove station encouraged locals to sign up to his campaign to provide 380 new carparks. The second version of that sign, a week or so later declared Dutton was in there fighting to get funding. Then, a week or so before the election the sign changed to read in huge lettering “380 carparks DELIVERED”! Now the Auditor has revealed that story of the fight for funding was a total fraud.
The funding was apparently doled out in secret among LNP members, Ministers and candidates in an un-competitive carve-up of what appears to have been a political campaign slush fund. Now it has emerged that the legislation that the LNP relied upon to grant funding for carparks was only legal if the carparks were attached to an inter-modal transfer facility. The proposed site is several hundred metres from the station and separated from it by a four-lane road. Along with many other proposed sites around the country, this does not appear to satisfy the legal requirement.
The next problem appears to be the physical attributes of the proposed sites. Apart from its apparent tendency for local flooding, the site does not appear to be large enough for 380 car parking spaces and access roadway. The land appears to be Council or State Government-owned parkland with mature trees and creek-side wildlife habitat. Even if the access/egress point could be made suitable for the volume and frequency of use during peak hours, which I doubt, based on my previous experience with traffic engineering and town planning issues, the cost and inconvenience to road users of upgrading the busy intersection would weigh heavily against any independent cost/benefit analysis of the proposal.
Based on the truth of the evidence now coming to light, the whole project appears to be a cynical and dishonest ploy to win a seat in a close electoral race. How can Dutton justify the use of the word “DELIVERED” on a giant advertising board? Was it just his re-election that he had in mind and how significant was this type of deceptive conduct in delivering LNP members in Dutton’s seat of Dickson and across the country?
Some billboards will need to be put up before the next election year Labor about the non delivered and rorted car park scheme with a – BEWARE VOTER
Labor makes the mistake of announcing policies, it should follow the Coalition’s tactics which are smear lie cheat , make anouncements with no substance and when you are elected you shrug your shoulders and say you voted for us
Just watch Dutton re-announce the funding ahead of next year’s election.
Dutton is the bloke Bernard Keane proposed as the next PM…if I recall correctly. And this is a relatively minor matter compared with some other things with which Dutton has been associated. In the Home Affairs portfolio for example, just ask the Auditor General. What were you thinking Bernard?
Dutton promised $11m for a car park, more than double the work’s projected cost and the most overfunded in the country.
At least Dutton is consistent.
Isn’t Dutton the Minister for Defence? Isn’t the military the go-to problem-solver of choice for the Morrison Govt? Why has the military not yet been brought in to oversee construction of the Kokoda Track Parking Facility?