Queensland premier blames overseas and interstate migration for transport pressures

The SE smears swarming on State parliament looking for more money to manage population growth. And we need support with infrastructure, with our transport. We are having a lot of growth here in southeast Queensland. We have a lot of growth in Ipswich. The Premier says one factor contributing to growth is Interstate and overseas migration. As a commuter myself, I know the traffic's been getting worse. And doubling down on his calls for the Federal Government to moderate international migration levels. Congestion has been getting worse and that's one of the reasons why we're urging the Australian Government to give us some time for the infrastructure to catch up. This is really cheap politics from the Premier. It's time for them to actually do their job, stump up and fund essential services rather than trying to find a bad guy to to blame. The government. Pointing to modelling that says since 2019 there's been a significant increase in trips on Queensland's roads, public transport and active networks by net, overseas and Interstate migration. So how do they know it's because of migrants? So this is total trips taken during the time that we've seen that migration surge, an increase in total trips of 229,000. I am not as convinced of those figures as as if we had done some of these studies in different ways. Mr. Miles wants to slow the migration rate but says it's not about migrants. They are very, very welcome here and I don't blame them for wanting to move here. This is simply about saying that the population is growing at a rate faster than we can build houses and deliver the infrastructure. That we need Multicultural Australia's CEO agrees there are pressures, but we are concerned about the way in which the conversation is being framed. Brisbane Lord Mayor says there's no single silver bullet. We need to slow down the migration rate for a period of time until we can catch our breath. We need more investment in public transport across the region and we need to really encourage investment in infrastructure as well. Late today the government announced an additional $100 million in funding for the SE councils.