The Newman Government has exposed more Labor waste that occurred under then-Transport Minister and now Labor Leader Annastacia Palaszczuk.
The previous Labor Government and Labor Leader Palaszczuk wasted taxpayers’ money on the failed TravelSmart program and installing electric car parks without any electric cars to use them.
Under the TravelSmart program, aimed at getting people back on to public transport, Labor wasted $1.4 million on self-promotion, including more than $750,000 on 190,000 backpacks. When the Newman Government took office, more than 58,000 backpacks were discovered, hidden away and gathering dust at a Brisbane warehouse.
These backpacks have been handed out to school children, charities and the community who will no doubt have a better use for them to help the needy and disadvantaged.
At the beginning of this week we still had around 1,100 TravelSmart backpacks and these will all be donated to charities including Heart Foundation, the Salvation Army and Brisbane Homeless Service Centre.
The not-so-Travel-Smart program not only wasted Queensland taxpayers’ money but failed to improve Labor’s abysmal public transport record that saw patronage decrease every year for the last four years.
Furthermore, in early 2012 the previous Labor Government completed the installation of 24 ‘electric’ car parks at 313 Adelaide Street to accommodate the needs of electric cars.
Some $43,500 was wasted on this exercise. However TMR do not have any electric cars in their vehicle fleet and there are currently no plans to purchase any.
At last year’s estimates, the then-Transport Minister was forced to admit she had lost 16 car parks – and this year we’ve exposed her waste of taxpayers’ money for electric car parks without any electric cars.
I would like to assure residents of Bundaberg and the Burnett that they can be sure the Newman Government will continue to deliver real cost of living savings for Queenslanders and not waste their money on backpacks and electric car parks.