Darren Cheeseman (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The AusLink (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2008 is perhaps one of the more simple bills that will be passed through this chamber, but it provides me with a good opportunity to talk about some important road related matters. There are essentially two parts to the bill. Firstly, it extends the Roads to Recovery program. This bill will continue the Roads to Recovery program until 30 June 2014. Secondly, this bill introduces some technical amendments to include related road infrastructure in the road funding mechanisms.

The Roads to Recovery program is absolutely essential in providing good Australian roads. It provides certainty to local councils and their planning around road upgrading and maintenance programs. Local governments are responsible for more than three-quarters of Australia’s roads, almost a million kilometres of road. That is a huge cost for most councils and they need to plan over very long lead times.

So many good projects have been delivered from this program in my electorate. Since 2005 the raw numbers of projects that have been delivered under this program are very impressive. Colac Otway Shire has had over 50 roads projects. The Surf Coast Shire has had over 60. There have been over 60 projects in Golden Plains Shire and 50 projects in the City of Greater Geelong. There is no way at all that these shires would have been able to deliver these roads projects without the assistance of the Commonwealth. Many of these projects have saved lives or prevented serious injury from road accidents.

This amendment bill supports the government’s commitment to increase our investment under the Roads to Recovery program over the next five years. I would like to draw attention to the fact that, as a clear commitment to this program by the Rudd government, we are increasing the allocation from $300 million per year to $350 million per year. This means that, over the next five years, we will provide $1.75 billion directly to councils to fix local transport issues. This money, of course, comes on top of some very generous commitments to upgrade major highways and ring-roads in my region. What we are effectively doing, through a joint state and federal partnership, is building a whole new modern road network within our region.

The federal government has committed $110 million to duplicating the Princes Highway between Geelong and Winchelsea. This is a critical commitment that will again save lives. It will also make life much easier for commuters and be a huge boost for the road transport industry within my electorate. This is a strategic commitment that will allow new industries to develop in Colac by bringing down the cost of road transport and reducing transport times. It gives Colac another competitive advantage. The duplication of this section of the Princes Highway will see Winchelsea transformed, with a big boost to the local economy as people and jobs come to the town.

Between Colac and Lavers Hill we have a notorious road where there are constant road accidents. It is a perilous drive in a range of conditions every day, and the road is very, very important for the truck transport industry serving the Otway region. The federal government have promised $7 million to upgrade this road, a decision that has been joyously received by the people of this region. This is another project that will save lives.

But perhaps the most important project in my region is the Geelong Ring Road. The Geelong Ring Road will benefit hundreds of thousands of people every week. We have promised to jointly fund the important next stages, stages 4A and 4B, of the Geelong Ring Road, which are the links to the Anglesea Road and the Princes Highway. We have promised $45 million to build stage 4B of the Geelong Ring Road, from Anglesea Road to the start of the Princes Highway West near Waurn Ponds, and $62.5 million for stage 4A of the Geelong Ring Road.

This is critical for this area in my electorate. It means that the residents of Jan Juc, Anglesea, Moriac, Bannockburn and many other towns in the region, within roughly 100 kilometres of Melbourne, will be able to pull out of their driveway and hit the first set of traffic lights when they hit Melbourne. Geelong residents will be able to get around their city much more easily. Traffic in Geelong will be very significantly lightened. Car pollution in Geelong city and its surrounds will be lessened. What Labor is doing for roads in my region is absolutely tremendous. It will be profoundly important for saving lives, saving time and boosting industry.

It is important to put on the record the opposition’s policies on roads in our region, because they are very significantly different to ours. At the last election, the Liberals refused to fund the last stages of the ring-road. They just bailed out of the project completely. They have also refused to match our commitment on the duplication of the Princes Highway. They have also refused to fund the Lavers Hill Road upgrade. These are very important projects for boosting my region’s economy and boosting safe movement of traffic within these regions, and I think they will give our region a competitive edge over many other parts of Australia. The opposition are obviously completely out of touch on the priorities within Geelong.

I would like to put on record my thanks to the former shadow minister for transport, Martin Ferguson, for his commitment to and passion for our region. I would also like to put on record my thanks to Anthony Albanese, the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, for the follow-through that he has shown on these projects. I, and the whole region, did a whole lot of lobbying to achieve these projects, and the response to Labor’s initiatives by our community has been absolutely fantastic. These commitments were very warmly received by the people of Corangamite and Corio and they certainly will be tremendously important for the future prosperity of our region.

I would also like to say that roads and building a modern road transport system are, I think, critical to building one’s economy. That is, of course, a very big statement, but I think it is absolutely true. For years Corangamite languished as a blue-blooded Liberal seat where nothing much happened for our roads within our region. I think the Liberal Party took the voters of Corangamite for granted. In contrast, we are transforming Corangamite’s road system and very much updating our capacity within our region. We are transforming the capacity of our economy to deliver to world markets. This bill, I think, changes the existing situation within my seat, but it also goes further. It gives us the capacity to fund rest stops, parking bays, decoupling facilities and electronic monitoring systems to increase the productivity of our road transport system. We are allocating $70 million for some of these purposes. This is an important reform that ensures that major road users will be able to make a contribution to our economy.

Before I finish my comments I would also like to put on the record my hope that the new Liberal Party, under the new leadership of Malcolm Turnbull, will embrace the reforms that we are undertaking within my seat. This is an important initiative to get these roads within my region updated to be able to deliver for our growing area. I commend this bill to the House.

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