Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I have raised on many occasions in this House the importance of roadworks and construction in my electorate. Recently, I had the Minister for Local Government, Territories and Roads, Jim Lloyd, come to the electorate of Paterson and I took the opportunity to show him how wise the investment of $20 million on the Bucketts Way was for my electorate. This road joins the Pacific Highway just north of Twelve Mile Creek, goes up through Limeburners Creek, Booral, Allworth and Stroud, and continues up through Craven, Wards River and Gloucester, across to Krambach and down towards Taree. That $20 million invested over four years has made an amazing difference.

To give you an idea, Bucketts Way used to be like the road in the McCain’s ad where you saw a truck driving along carrying boxes of vegetables in the back and all of a sudden the vegetables become tossed and mixed. It is no longer like that. Today, the Bucketts Way is a good road. We have invested $20 million and very shortly, at the end of this financial year, that $20 million will have been totally expended. The benefits to my communities, particularly to the businesses, have been immense. Road safety has increased because of this investment.

It was no surprise that at the last election I went to my ministerial colleagues and sought $10 million for the road between Dungog and Raymond Terrace and the road from Dungog across to Tocal—two main feeder roads into a shire with a small rating base that finds it very difficult to keep up with its roadworks. That shire does a tremendous job with the financial ability that it has, but it has a large network of roads. We have now signed off on and provided funding of $2 million to Port Stephens Council for the work between Raymond Terrace and just north of Glen Oak. We have provided $6 million for Dungog Shire Council for the work from Glen Oak up to Dungog and some of the work over towards Maitland. We have provided $2 million for the Lakes Way at the intersection around the Bungwahl turn-off.

That is $30 million invested in regional roads in my electorate. But each time we put it to the New South Wales state government that they should match the funding—not to provide more, just to match it—they said no. They say no as if the roads were wholly owned by Bob Baldwin. The reality is that these roads are owned by the people of New South Wales. They are owned by all the taxpayers. What we have seen is a deliberate walking away from funding regional roads in our region so that these councils are disadvantaged. When we funded the original $20 million for the Bucketts Way, the estimated cost at that time was around $50 million for a quality road. Twenty million dollars has made an impact. But, since we provided that money, the amount of money coming from the state Labor government in New South Wales has been almost nil. Mr Deputy Speaker, how much do you think the state government have contributed to the roads around Dungog? It has been a negligible amount of money. We have provided $30 million, and it is hard to count the amount provided by the state government in New South Wales for these roads.

We have a state election coming up, and it is unfortunate, in some ways, for the people of Dungog that they have been moved from a marginal Labor seat to a safe coalition seat—though it seemed to make no difference, because we could not get a funding commitment from the Labor member when he was there. We will see a raft of new candidates for the Labor Party, and I understand that there will be an announcement tomorrow of the new candidate for the seat of Maitland. Mr John Price is retiring and Mr Aaron Beasley is replacing Mr John Bartlett. These people will be invisible, like their predecessors, when it comes to road funding in my electorate.

What they need to understand is that these are the people of the regions who need safe roads for their businesses and for their personal safety, and they can see growth and opportunity in investing in roads. The safety of children travelling on school buses is critically important when we invest in these roads. But again we see the Labor Party endlessly walk away when it comes to opportunities. Yet, as I have said in this House before, when it comes to another billion dollars or two for a tunnel in Sydney, the money is always there. They always find a way of doing it—it may involve paying out penalty payments to the contractors—but they can never find a million dollars or two for the roads in regional Australia.

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