Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The AusLink (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2008 has two main purposes, and it is interesting that one is directly relevant to comments that the member for Riverina just made about the heavy transport usage around Tarcutta. Firstly, this bill will change the definition of a road in the AusLink (National Land Transport) Act so as to allow further future funding of heavy vehicle facilities such as off-road rest stops. The government has made it clear that the funding of this part of the program will depend on the passage of the legislation to increase road user charges. Secondly, this bill will allow the Roads to Recovery program to be extended for another five years with additional funding allocations attached to it.

In the comments I want to make this afternoon I firstly want to talk about the importance of some of the subsets of the AusLink program, particularly the Roads to Recovery program and the Black Spot Program, and also draw attention to some pressing issues that still need to be addressed in the Illawarra. I note that there are representatives of the department here. I hope that some of these comments get passed on to the minister. We will certainly be making further submissions in a presentation both to Infrastructure Australia and directly to the minister once our economic case has been concluded. But I will get to that later on in my speech on this bill.

The Roads to Recovery program is greatly valued in my community. Recently, my three local government authorities were notified of the balance of their program allocation to the end of the 2008-09 period. Wollongong City Council was to receive $1.176 million, Shellharbour was to receive $468,000 and Kiama was to receive $175,000. Most importantly, I was able to tell my local government authorities that the Rudd Labor government committed to an increase of $50 million a year for this program when it recently announced that the program would be extended for another five years.

This bill will deliver new money to help make local roads safer for motorists. In that regard, it will certainly be very welcomed by my community. Around Australia, councils are responsible for maintaining more than 655,000 kilometres of local roads, which are used by millions of working Australians and other community members on a daily basis. My three local government authorities always welcome the additional assistance that can be provided for a range of activities—and, particularly in the transport area, the funds that come from the federal government. I am advised that each council’s individual allocation of the new funding commitment will be determined later in the year by state and territory grants commissions. I think that local governments in my area can now confidently plan for continued improvements of their road networks.

I want to particularly thank the minister for the $900,000 that my electorate received to fix nine local dangerous black spots. The Black Spot Program, like the Roads to Recovery program, is very welcomed by our community. It is specifically targeted at roads that have a history of fatalities, injuries and crashes and roads where there is a significant risk of crashes occurring.

The $900,000 will be spent on fixing nine local black spots. Each of the three largest grants of around $200,000 will see improvements at Knights Hill Road, Jamberoo; at Shellharbour and Addison Streets, Lake Illawarra; and, very importantly, on a dangerous stretch of road, the Jamberoo Mountain Road, Jamberoo, which has newly been incorporated into my electorate of Throsby.

From next year, the Rudd government will deliver on its election commitment to increase black spot funding by 33 per cent, up to a record $60 million nationally. We are all aware that the funding which goes into addressing black spot problems has a very important multiplier effect. As the chair of the New South Wales consultative panel said:

For every $1 invested in fixing black spots, around $14 is returned to the community through a reduction in the number and cost of crashes—

let alone the terrible fatalities and the injuries we see on many roads.

I would like to spend most of my contribution this afternoon talking about issues which I think need to be addressed by the minister and the federal government. We hope that we will have compelling evidence to put before Infrastructure Australia to see a more significant commitment of federal funds to the Illawarra region. Currently the road links south of Gwynneville to our port at Port Kembla are not on the AusLink national network, nor is the Princes Highway from Wollongong to the Jervis Bay turn-off. And yet the existing and current Sydney-Wollongong Corridor Strategy document rightly points out that the future of the Sydney-Wollongong Corridor Strategy will be shaped by factors such as the expansion of Port Kembla—the port—and population growth in the southern region. The port of Port Kembla will be a key driver of economic growth for the Illawarra region and a major generator of traffic flows.

Reading from that corridor strategy document, let me point out the impact that expansion of the port will have. We will see the progressive relocation of cars from Glebe Island in Sydney, which will result in approximately 250,000 cars arriving at Port Kembla yearly. It is anticipated that approximately 50 per cent of these will be processed on site and the remainder will be delivered by B-double road transport to Western Sydney, around the area that is so well represented by my colleague the member for Werriwa.

Allowing for both single run and return trips, the document estimates that this will result in an additional 93,750 truck movements a year or approximately 120 B-double and 250 rigid-single articulated daily return trips. It is likely that such trucks would use Mount Ousley Road, then Picton and Appin Roads and the Hume Highway to access Western Sydney rather than heading north along the F6. That is the impact that relocation of cars is going to have on our road system. Along with the cars, we will see expansion in containers and general cargo, which will also be progressively relocated from Port Jackson in Sydney. This trade could represent approximately 250 additional ship calls and up to 40,000 to 50,000 containers and 125,000 tonnes of break-bulk cargo such as timber, machinery and steel.

The expansion of activities at the port—very much promoted by the New South Wales state government—together with the expansion of industrial activity in south-west Sydney, will inevitably put increasing pressure on sections of the existing corridor and arterial links such as the Picton and Appin roads. As the Sydney-Wollongong corridor is the primary transport route to the South Coast of New South Wales, there being no railway beyond Bombaderry, just north of Nowra, naturally this increased economic activity will place increasing pressure on the Princes Highway.

Currently the New South Wales and Victorian state governments have responsibility for the highway between Wollongong and Sale. It is true, and it has been welcomed, that funding has been supplemented over the past few years by the Australian government through the Black Spot and Strategic Regional programs. As I said, that has been welcomed. But there is still a desperate need for additional funding. So I believe, as does my colleague the member for Cunningham, that there is a strong argument to have the section of road between Gwynneville and the port incorporated into the AusLink network and for greater federal assistance for the upgrade of the Princes Highway into a dual carriageway to the Jervis Bay turnoff. If this section of the highway were to be included in the AusLink network it would be easier to access federal sources of funding.

A local lobby group known as PHocus was created some years ago with the aim of lobbying to speed up enhancements to the highway. A report they completed in conjunction with the NRMA suggested that extending a four-lane dual carriageway to just north of the Jervis Bay turnoff—which would enable full B-double access—would reap considerable long-term economic reward, yielding a positive net present value ranging from $611 million to just over $1 billion over the next 30 years. Their analysis showed that these improvements would come from reduced travel time, avoidance of crash costs and B-double productivity gains.

According to the most recent data I have seen, traffic volumes on the Princes Highway continue to grow at an average of two per cent to three per cent per annum. There is a significant proportion of heavy-vehicle traffic on the highway, particularly at the point closest to Port Kembla. As the growth of the port accelerates, more heavy-vehicle traffic can be expected, leading to congestion and greater safety issues if the matter is not properly addressed.

In 2001, our region attracted and generated over 20 million tonnes of freight. The freight task is expected to grow at a conservative four per cent per annum to 2035, which obviously is going to place even more stress on the highway. That extra freight comes on top of increasing numbers of visitors to the South Coast—a beautiful part of the coast, which attracts many visitors, who reach it through this highway—particularly in school holiday time.

Therefore it is not surprising that this section of the Princes Highway compares very poorly with other roads around the nation in terms of crash rates. The NRMA reported crash rates of between 29.3 and 50.6 per million of vehicle-kilometres travelled on the highway. The level of both crashes and casualties is high when compared, say, to the similar Hume Highway link between Campbelltown City and Mulwaree. In 2005, there were some 318 people killed and injured on the Princes Highway. This is much higher than the equivalent figure of 174 on that section of the Hume Highway link that I mentioned. So I think that the appeals that have been made, to give greater consideration to federal allocations of funding to the Princes Highway, are well justified—on economic grounds and on human grounds too.

It is not unusual for the Illawarra Mercury, our local paper, to have front-page stories like this one from a couple of weeks ago—headed ‘Husband’s mercy dash death on Princes Hwy’—telling of another family torn apart in a bizarre tragedy on the Princes Highway. It recounts the death on the highway of a man who was on his way to pick up from hospital his terminally ill wife, who died not long thereafter, leaving two orphan children. As you would be aware, the state coroner in New South Wales has recently conducted an investigation into some of the fatalities on that stretch of road.

In short, there are a number of reasons for the inclusion of this section of the Princes Highway in the AusLink network. They include the increasing activity that will be planned for the port at Port Kembla, the economic importance of the highway to our region and to the intra- and interstate movement of goods, the fact that there is an appalling crash record and continuing fatalities on that road, and because we have seen the inclusion of other corridors in the AusLink network that have smaller traffic counts and less road freight than the section of road I am referring to along the highway. If we can get the highway upgraded, it will produce long-term productivity and economic benefits.

In cooperation with my colleague the member for Cunningham, I recently organised a transport infrastructure forum in the Illawarra. We brought together all the local stakeholders to try to arrive at some consensus on what we as federal members consider to be significant infrastructure projects for consideration by the new Infrastructure Australia authority. Both my colleague Sharon Bird and I were of the view that it was not sufficient just to rely on the submissions coming from the state government to the department and to Infrastructure Australia, particularly if they did not encompass the broader range of issues that the federal members thought we should rightly bring to the attention of the national government. It was surprising and very heartening to see the outcome, which was unanimous agreement by all the major local stakeholders that the development and expansion of the port should and would, we hoped, determine the land transport links needed for the Illawarra region.

It was agreed to pursue as a priority project for funding the Maldon-Dombarton rail link, which, for those who do not live in the Illawarra, was abandoned by a former state Liberal government but which will increasingly play, we think, an important role linked to the expansion of the port. That was indicated as a very high priority. I want to place on record my thanks to the Rudd government and to the former shadow minister for transport at that time, Martin Ferguson, who at the insistence of the member for Cunningham and her lobbying efforts finally delivered a grant for an economic feasibility study to be conducted into the completion of that rail link. I understand from the port authority and the federal department that the parameters of that study have now been determined, and that study will now go out for tender. We are hoping that the economics do stack up and that the Maldon-Dombarton rail link will come about through the considerations of the minister and Infrastructure Australia of important national infrastructure projects.

The second issue they wanted to list as a priority was the upgrade of the Princes Highway to the Jervis Bay turn-off and an upgrade of the Picton Road. The community has put in funds to enable the best case that we can present in a short time frame before the closing date of submissions to Infrastructure Australia. So we are now busily working on preparing our economic and business case for the Maldon-Dombarton rail link, the upgrade of the Princes Highway and the upgrade of the Picton Road.

In speaking to this bill I want to commend our government and the minister, in particular, on their enormous commitments to clearing the backlog of important national infrastructure projects, a backlog that is causing capacity constraints in our economy. It is obvious, as the member for one of the seats in the Illawarra said, that we have huge capacity constraints because of the inadequacy of investment in road and rail infrastructure in the Illawarra region. I am hopeful that, finally, given the opportunity, we will be able to present an impressive economic and business case for the attention of the minister and for the people sitting on the board of Infrastructure Australia when they determine the very important national projects for the future.

There were other matters that were considered at the transport forum. Some of those matters related mainly to responsibilities of state governments like making sure the trains run more smoothly and the F6 expansion into the southern suburbs of Sydney. As far as national projects are concerned, I think the upgrade of the highway, the upgrade of Picton Road and, hopefully, bringing the rail link between Maldon and Dombarton to its conclusion would greatly assist our economic underpinnings to ensure the prosperity of the Illawarra region into the future. Concluding with those few words, I hope that representations will fall on fertile ground in the coming round of negotiations about infrastructure projects.

See this speech in context