Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

Your forbearance is very much appreciated. I am encouraged by it, in fact. We are here—initially at least—to talk about the AusLink (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2008. The member for Braddon touched on that in his opening remarks. Essentially, the bill contains a number of provisions, the most important of which involve the extension of the highly successful Roads to Recovery program for another five years. This was a coalition initiative and was introduced by the Howard government to almost nationwide acclaim. The benefits of the Roads to Recovery program, particularly for local government with its responsibilities for some 800,000 kilometres of roads across our country, are well acknowledged and the extension of the program is well justified.

Before I touch on AusLink and the Roads to Recovery program, I want to briefly share some thoughts about another provision of the bill which redefines what a road is. There is some concern that the definition of ‘road’ in the act as it stands may put in doubt the development of off-road facilities. Important off-road facilities include roadside rest stops—these are particularly important for our interstate trucking fraternity—parking bays, decoupling facilities and also some support for new technology as it relates to electronic monitoring systems and the like. These initiatives are important. Transport safety and transport success are not just about pavements; they are about innovation. The member for Braddon touched on a fuel innovation that he is familiar with. I also share his optimism about those alternative fuel pathways, having had some involvement of a similar kind with compressed natural gas measures. The only constraint with that measure was that it was mainly for a transport system that kept coming back to the same base every day. So issues about refuelling et cetera, which are real challenges, were overcome. However, that is a challenge for the future. I certainly share many of the member’s thoughts on alternative fuels for the heavy transport sector.

New technologies are very important. I have learnt—particularly through Fletcher Davis, who was one of the organisers of the recent transport sector protest where many of the concerns of drivers were brought to the attention of the Australian public and political leaders, and also through the insights that Brendan Nelson gained on his road trip in the big rig—about the regulatory burden on drivers. The state transport regulations are heavy-handed, prescriptive, inconsistent and punishing. Hopefully, we will achieve some consistency in those regulations through the use of electronic monitoring systems whereby truck drivers will be able to record in their logbooks not only the direction but also the duration, rest times and the like during their journeys. Technology that captures that information should be embraced. It will be a key tool in the armoury to ensure that vehicle drivers are acknowledged as a very important part of our economy and that appropriate measures are in place to tackle the risk of fatigue, not only for the drivers themselves but also for others.

When I am on some of these highways and B-doubles are whizzing by me, I can assure you that I would like to be comforted that the driver, the pilot of that potentially lethal projectile, has their full faculties and is fully functioning, alert and attuned to their responsibilities as a driver. That is a big responsibility, given the weight of those rigs and the activities of other road users and people adjacent to the road carriageways. The initiative for AusLink to include electronic monitoring systems as part of the national land transport system is a very good one.

The rest stops, as I touched on, provide drivers with the opportunity for some respite, away from the hum, then the approaching roar and later diminishing roar of heavy vehicles as they go by. Hopefully, the driver is able to rest some distance away from a refrigerated unit. There is nothing worse, I understand, than pulling up at a rest stop, ready for a four-hour kip, only to find yourself parked beside a refrigerated unit. The hum of that refrigeration system potentially sees you stop for four hours but not rest for those four hours. I think those things go to soundly and thoughtfully developed rest stops and parking bays. We know that issues concerning rest and respite from the noise of heavy transport are a very important priority for drivers who are seeking those periods of respite—rest and recovery—to regain their alertness to continue on with their work. This is also a very important issue for residential areas.

I note the congestion on the Frankston Freeway, already a very important part of our transport network but now with EastLink funnelling more traffic onto it. I feel for and have been working actively on behalf of the residents who are adjacent to the Frankston Freeway. Those who visit the great Mornington Peninsula to enjoy all that it has to offer would know the Frankston Freeway. It has been there for some time but now, where the merge occurs with EastLink, some of the vegetation that used to act as a sound barrier to buffer the noise of that traffic has gone. The traffic itself has increased in volume, and the increased proportion of heavy vehicles is making traffic noise a real curse, a real burden and a real source of frustration and despair for people who are adjacent to the Frankston Freeway.

When thinking about new transport innovations, EastLink is a magnificently engineered piece of infrastructure, but I am sure you will lament with me, Madam Deputy Speaker, about the tolls being imposed. As you travel along there, there are some magnificent sound barrier structures with great sensitivity to housing—particularly around Bangholme, where you can see a house just the other side of a local access road. Some thoughtfulness has gone into that sound barrier. If you then head down a little bit further to Frankston, around the old war service estate there at Belvedere Park and adjacent to the light industrial area, there has been no such thoughtfulness for them.

I was troubled to learn of some statements made some years ago that there would be no sound barrier treatment on the Frankston Freeway. I find that bizarre and disappointing, given that some of the sound abatement fixtures, be they trees, were lost during the construction of that road, so even what was modestly there has gone and people are very close to that road that is suffering from a great deal more traffic. I just think a more responsible and thoughtful approach of the kind shown with the construction and engineering solutions on EastLink applied to where EastLink runs into the Frankston Freeway is long overdue.

I am told some sound monitoring will start shortly on that. I have already received some copies of correspondence suggesting some sound monitoring has been done at particular locations. Sound monitoring has suggested volumes in excess of 68 decibels, which is one of the trigger points for remediation in sound barrier terms, but then that was discounted because the wind was blowing the wrong way. I appreciate that wind has an impact on sound, but if it is 68 decibels then those residents are not going to be fussed about whether the wind has contributed to it. It still is 68 decibels, and I think a thoughtful, sensitive and more forward-looking approach to tackling this issue is a very important call that I make on behalf of the local community.

I welcome wholeheartedly the sound barriers, the rest stops and the parking bays that AusLink will now be able to incorporate. I urge the state government, ConnectEast, SITA and VicRoads—you can imagine the jurisdictional jumble that is involved here—to understand as we do that respite is important for the good health of truck drivers and that some respite from trucking noise for those who do not drive the trucks is good for their wellbeing as well. I encourage and call on the state government and its agencies to take more decisive thoughtful action in that regard.

The electorate of Dunkley has been a major beneficiary of the Roads to Recovery program itself. Projects have been carried out particularly on roads that I would call roads in transition. We have the national highway network, we had the Roads of National Importance program, we have local roads and the state has arterial roads, but for growing and developing communities an acknowledgement that roads in transition are a public policy challenge is something that is long overdue. Down on the Mornington Peninsula and in the greater Frankston area we see new suburban developments and in some places a conversion of housing use. Holiday houses that used to get plenty of use over summer, thus bolstering the population, now house permanent residents. So there is quite a change in the complexion, even though you might not see a physical change in housing construction, and there are also new urban areas where housing construction reaches out over areas like Langwarrin, Mornington East and the like.

What happens, though, once you move away from those subdivisions is that you get to roads that in some cases it was never envisaged would carry this kind of traffic. I think about Warrandyte Road, Bungal Road, Mornington-Tyabb Road and the like, just to name a few—even the Frankston-Cranbourne Road and its duplication. These are all important projects, many of which were supported by the Howard government under Roads to Recovery. I am optimistic that the new government will be able to play a constructive role there as well, but the key thing is that a once rural road, now acting as an important arterial to a growing suburban area, might have a pavement that is 3½ metres wide.

That might have been okay in the rural days; you might have had a couple of wheels leave the sealed area and go onto the shoulder. But, when you are getting enormous volumes of traffic, kids trying to get to school, a mixture of pedestrians and cyclists, new urban development and roads built and designed for a time that is now past, you get a terrible coming together of factors. We must be mindful that changing population patterns will require some remediation of the road network well beyond what the subdividers and developers would have responsibility for. I am hopeful that the Roads to Recovery program will be an ally and an asset for that kind of work into the future. We have seen North Road in Langwarrin—the importance of the traffic lights being installed there at the intersection with McClelland Drive. Again, the traffic congestion that was there was horrendous. In the growing areas of Langwarrin and Mornington East, many roads are groaning under the weight of the population growth, and I look forward to working effectively with the government and the local councils to make sure something is done about that in the future.

There is a particular provision in this bill that I like, that I wish had been around—and perhaps, Madam Deputy Speaker, you may have wished was around—in the past. I think of the half a billion dollars plus that the Howard government committed to a toll-free Scoresby Freeway. We all know the shame and scandal of the state government promising before the election to build a toll-free Scoresby and then doing completely the opposite just months after the election. In this bill there is actually a provision for the allocation or the setting aside of funds to a state for Roads to Recovery projects without specifically knowing to whom that will be paid eventually—some quarantining or warehousing of those resources while the detail is resolved. Wouldn’t we have loved to have had our half a billion dollars for a toll-free Scoresby Freeway quarantined so that we could have seen those resources applied to the benefit of the east and south-east of Melbourne?

I mentioned yesterday in this chamber that we in the east and south-east are the only part of the metropolitan community that pays to use the arterial ring-road. There was that horrendous front page of the Herald Sun just a couple of days ago pointing to the state government—the Brumby government—talking with the constructors of EastLink about building the Frankston bypass as a tollway. Sixty kilometres out of the CBD, the communities I represent will be paying tolls.

Direct funding of transport infrastructure has its place. I am not against tolls; I know they have a role to play. But when will there be consistency in the application of this financing tool so that it is not used to discriminate against one part of a metropolitan community and then set to one side for another? Some consistency is required. The Howard government, when it was elected, committed some funding through AusLink to assist in a toll-free construction of the Frankston bypass: $150 million with the condition that it be toll free, with environmental sensitivity to the design, with some thoughtfulness about non-motorised vehicle use—something that is now being retrofitted to EastLink, with pedestrian access over that magnificent piece of infrastructure, and it is hardly a few months old. But now we are hearing about tolls again.

What is it about the state Labor government that thinks tolls are not okay for some people in greater Melbourne, but the community I represent keeps copping them at every turn? We did not get any compensatory projects as a result of the imposition of the tolls; we did not get a Ringwood bypass without tolls; we did not get an extension to the Knox light rail and we did not get the toll-free Dandenong bypass. We got zip when there was the imposition of the tolls. And now what are we going to get? To add insult to injury, now they are talking about another tollway, when really the Frankston bypass needs to be built to be toll free. That is at least the honourable thing to do after being done over by the state government in relation to tolls and EastLink. It is just outrageous that such a further insult to the community I represent could be even contemplated.

One of the things that I am optimistic about, though, into the future and that may well be accommodated by the AusLink funding framework is the very real challenge we are facing in terms of urban planning. Bernard Salt, a demographer and someone I have known for some years, has an article in the Australian today, and I draw the chamber’s attention to it, on page 24 of the business section. I am not talking about the Herald Sun, where there has been some assessment of particular neighbourhoods and the great city of Frankston has been omitted because it is too Anglo apparently—we are not even on as one of the best places to live in Melbourne because we are too Anglo. That is an interesting reason to rule us out: we do not get a pic fac in the Herald Sun for the best suburbs because we are too Anglo.

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