Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Support) Share this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to rise in support of the AusLink (National Land Transport) Amendment Bill 2008. I note the large number of members who have spoken on this bill, which I believe is reflective of how vital the concern of roads is to our electorates, particularly in a nation with our geography. It is good to remind ourselves of the two key aspects of this bill. Not only does it expand the amount of funding available for Roads to Recovery by $350 million out to 2014—a massive injection of $1.75 billion—but it also amends the definition of ‘road’ to expand the concept to include truck rest stops, which are so vital to the safety of our roads. There are also the other measures in the heavy vehicle safety and productivity package that the government intends to implement, which has $70 million worth of funding associated with it. I will come back to that point later in relation to my own electorate of Eden-Monaro.

I think my electorate is very illustrative of the essential nature of roads to the fabric of our social lives, to safety and to the economy. It is noteworthy that there was, just this morning, a fatality on the Monaro Highway. My heart goes out to the family of the victim involved. It highlights what a challenge the roads are in Eden-Monaro. Not only do we have many winding roads and no dual carriageways to speak of in most of the electorate but we also have seasonal challenges, such as the snow and ice conditions during the winter months, which quite often extend into a great part of the year. I certainly have faced this challenge myself many times. I nearly lost a campaign worker last year whose car slid off the road in the snow and ice on Laurel Hill. His car was a write-off. This situation is of great concern to families who have kids who have to travel up to Canberra, for example, for TAFE studies and the like. Not only do we have these conditions but many of the roads in Eden-Monaro are very primitive—dirt roads, in fact. Anybody who has travelled the Doctor George Mountain Road, the Tantawangalo Mountain Road, the Eden to Towamba road, the Springfield Road or the Brindabella, Bobeyan or Araluen roads will know what I am talking about. These are significant safety challenges as well as impediments to our economy.

We depend a great deal on these roads. It is an electorate that has a large amount of large-scale haulage in the logging, timber, dairy and livestock industries in the region and also in our tourism. In fact, a lot of our tourism is being held up by these minor road impediments. An example of that is the fabulous Yarrangobilly Caves, over on the South-West Slopes, which is a magnificent tourist venue with huge potential. I recommend all Australians go and visit this site, where there are 300 caves, massive natural cathedrals, warm springs and a beautiful old 1930s guesthouse. The road from the sealed road to the actual site is very difficult for coach access, so we cannot actually get seniors bus tour packages involved to get people to Yarrangobilly.

Similarly, we have been trying to promote employment and industry amongst our Indigenous communities in Eden-Monaro. One of the great ventures near the town of Eden is the Jigamy Farm project, which Pastor Ossie Cruse, a great Indigenous leader of the area, was instrumental in getting up and running. The problem is that the access road to that project, once again, is not suitable for bus access. So roads are critical to improving our economic situation in Eden-Monaro.

One of the things that really shocked me during the election campaign last year was what I call ‘the great Howard road hoax in Eden-Monaro’. It is this politics of hoax that I really hope comes to an end soon, because we are obviously seeing manifestations of it in relation to the pensions issue and in statements that the member for Goldstein made yesterday in relation to the Googong Dam issue, which I will come back to. The example that I give to illustrate this hoax is that last year the Howard government would turn up, in relation to a road project, in fact highlighting the situation that over 12 years we had not seen any effort—or any improvement to these critical road pieces—and it was always the blame game, the politics of pointing at the state and saying it was their responsibility. No effort was gone to to sit down around the table and actually work through these issues to see what each party could bring to the table.

The modus operandi of the Howard government in the lead-up to the election was to come out with a small bag of money and say, ‘Here’s some money to fix Gocup Road,’ let’s say. The figure they had on offer in that situation was $11 million. Then they would say: ‘Okay, that’s it. Gocup Road will be fixed now. We’re going to deliver that if we’re re-elected.’ But the reality was that no effort had gone into sitting around the table with the state government. The road had not even been declared a state road and there was no agreement on what it would actually cost to fix the road. I made no comment on Gocup Road during the campaign for that reason—I did not want to mislead the electorate about the time line or ability to deliver that project.

Since then, we have discovered a great deal about the Howard government not having sat down with the state government. So their indication to the community that they had this somehow sealed away with the state government was completely misleading. It simply had not happened. Since the election, the member for Riverina and the state member for Wagga Wagga have been saying in the press that somehow the Rudd Labor government stole the $11 million that was set aside for Gocup Road. That simply was not true. There was no $11 million set aside at all, so this is completely misleading the community.

In relation to Gocup Road, I sat down and started doing the actual work that you need to do to deliver a project like this. I have held stakeholder meetings involving Visy; the Tumut and Gundagai councils; Carter Holt Harvey, who run the mill at Tumut; and the New South Wales Roads and Traffic Authority. There had been no discussion and no planning done by the Howard government. It is serious because, by 2010, it is estimated that six million tonnes of wood product will run along the road, doubling from the three million tonnes that was travelling along that road in 1998. It is a serious economic and safety concern. We have decided that we really need to have our facts, because there is disagreement over the amount of money required to fix the road. In some quarters $23 million was suggested. The Roads and Traffic Authority was suggesting $60 million.

We now await Softwoods Working Group’s output, which is going to tell us exactly what volume of traffic we can expect and what the focus and forecasts are for transport productivity. Their report should be produced within the next month or so. Following that, we will have an estimate by the Road Traffic Authority in New South Wales as to the actual costs and work estimates that will be needed to actually do the work. From there, I am determined to sit down with the state government, our colleagues and the minister at the federal level to work out a way forward for the Gocup Road. That is how these things should be done, instead of the election stunts that we saw last year.

That type of stunt was repeated again in relation to the Kings Highway. One of the beefs I had over the Headquarters Joint Operations Command Project out near Bungendore was that it was obviously a purely political ploy to put a project into a marginal electorate. When it was first mooted, not many people in Defence that I knew considered it to be an ideal site for such a headquarters. But, worse than that, the infrastructure aspects around it were not taken care of at all, so roads and water were not initially factored in to the imposition of such a significant project. Then last year, when this became a very significant factor to the local community, the Howard government again said, ‘Oh well, we’ll throw in $8.2 million to fix the Kings Highway.’ That $8.2 million would have been effectively useless in relation to doing anything to the Kings Highway. In addition to that, this was a tripartite issue—in fact, also perhaps an issue on other levels, involving councils in the area that could have been brought into the discussions. Certainly it needed the ACT and the New South Wales governments to be brought into the discussions.

That is the work that we did. We went out and talked to the ACT and New South Wales and we came up with a more significant level of funding from the Commonwealth—$23.3 million and not $8.2 million. We were able to use that to leverage $10 million of New South Wales money and extra commitment from the ACT. So we are going to see significant upgrading works to improve safety on the Kings Highway, which is a notorious road for casualties. Due to the headquarters project, the volume of traffic is likely to double, so it is very important that we get the safety right on that Kings Highway stretch.

Once again, we are seeing a pattern emerging of the photo opportunity, the small bag of gold, no actual commitment and no actual work done to deliver a project. In relation to this, yesterday the member for Goldstein asked me, ‘Will the member for Eden-Monaro be forced to consider his portfolio responsibilities and the needs of the planned Defence headquarters near Bungendore?’ Once again, this reflects his lack of knowledge on the project, because eventually the water issue was taken on board in development of the site. The site has been landscaped and constructed to maximise its water catchment. It uses leading technology in respect of water recycling projects and should be self-sufficient from a water point of view, so that is not a consideration. He also pointed to the fact that Senator Gary Humphries and the former member for Eden-Monaro had gone out and staged another photo opportunity at the Googong Dam and said, ‘Voila—magic wand—our 20 years of nothing happening on this project is now resolved.’ Nothing of that sort had happened. Once again, there had been no discussions with the ACT government and all of the issues that remained unresolved were still unresolved.

I noticed that the member for Goldstein talked about the current solution being in the context of an election. Of course, that photo opportunity last year was in the lead-up to the federal election, so it was perhaps a much more cynical move. We have actually delivered; we have secured something incredibly complicated. After 20 years of nothing happening, it has taken a lot of hard yakka, and I was personally involved in that. I take a great deal of pride in having brought it to a solution. No matter whether there was an election involved, there was a lot of fine detail required to make it happen, not only to determine on which basis the ownership issues would be resolved—and what we have done is come up with a leasing arrangement so the Commonwealth remains involved as an honest broker—but also to make sure that the water rights for Queanbeyan were secure for the future. That has been done by the execution of a specific water agreement, and I took great pleasure in taking an active role in that and preparing it at the working level, bringing some old skills to play, hopefully. We have squared away the future for Queanbeyan, so I can put the member for Goldstein’s mind at rest on that issue. It is an entirely equitable and satisfactory arrangement which will provide the commercial certainty that ActewAGL was looking for out of this arrangement as well—a win-win situation which illustrates how sitting together and having the interests of your community at heart can result in great progress, instead of the finger-pointing and the blame game that we saw previously.

I am very pleased that we are tackling this issue of roads around the area and that the specific promises we made during the campaign are now coming to fruition. Construction has begun and people can now see the practical effects of our delivering on promises. The $34 million MR92 project going through Nerriga is well and truly underway; construction is underway in duplicating Lanyon Drive, where we committed $7.5 million, once again leveraging ACT and New South Wales contributions of $8 million and $7.5 million respectively; and $23.3 million has been committed to the Kings Highway and $30 million to the Pialligo-Majura link project. That project will make a significant difference to my Queanbeyan residents commuting to the ACT. Following 30 years of inaction on the Bega bypass, a land corridor that was set aside a long time ago, we have committed $30 million to finally get that off the ground. We have also committed funds to the Bombowlee Creek Road near Tumut.

Under the Roads to Recovery program, the electorate of Eden-Monaro has done very well, reflecting its urgent needs. For so long effort has been lacking in the region, but now $6.355 million is being invested under the Roads to Recovery program across all councils throughout the electorate. Following on from this we have committed $60,000 to address a black spot issue near Braidwood—once again along the Kings Highway—to improve safety. There has also been a commitment of $28.1 million in federal assistance grants, which is going to greatly benefit all of my councils. For quite a number of those councils these are very significant increases in assistance. This is extremely significant given how important those grants have become to local council budgets.

I was highly delighted to see the Prime Minister and the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government announce the convening of the local government summit to be held in November. This was an election promise that was made last year. It will lead to the inclusion of local councils in the Constitution and the setting up of a more equitable relationship with the Commonwealth to address infrastructure issues. I must say that this was received with great rapture by my councils, who are all doing it extremely tough. They face the worst of all possible worlds with a small ratepayer base and a high roads liability issue, so we really need to make them more viable. We just cannot let things go the way they have been. There is potentially a state of collapse out there in local governance in rural and regional Australia and I absolutely applaud what the Prime Minister and the minister for infrastructure are doing on this issue. I can assure members that this is going to be received very, very well by local councils. They have been waiting to see us move forward on this election promise and it is great to see that happening.

The Rudd Labor government has also committed to doing a $100,000 strategic road safety study in the Queanbeyan area in order to sort out our issues there—such as moving forward on a bypass for the Queanbeyan area. I am also looking very closely—in the context of the Regional Leadership Forum—at a broader strategy for our roads programs in the area. I mentioned that we included in this legislation the broadening of the definition of roads to include truck stops, and I note that the Australian Trucking Association has highlighted the need for a truck stop somewhere between Kiama and Eden on the Princes Highway. I certainly hope that we can leverage support for this, to install a truck stop in the context of the building of the Bega bypass. This would greatly improve safety on the Princes Highway, which, as I say, has drawn a lot of attention as an area with a high casualty rate over the years.

It was wonderful to see that for the first time there has been serious federal government interest in the Princes Highway through the interest of my colleague Martin Ferguson, who came down and saw the infrastructure issues associated with that road. I am hoping to see more attention as time goes on and as we resolve some of our other broader national infrastructure issues such as the Hume Highway and Pacific Highway. I hope we can bring more attention to, and more collaborative effort with the state government on, the Princes Highway.

I congratulate the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government and the council on this initiative, as a vital step in underpinning the viability of our local government and addressing road safety issues. I might add that this nation is also relieved that at last it has a government that understands the importance of infrastructure to our economic growth and that is acting to remove the dead hand of constraint that the lack of attention to infrastructure has been for the last 12 years. The creation of the Building Australia Fund and Infrastructure Australia is proof positive of the foresight and vision of the Rudd Labor government. These measures will for the first time introduce a strategically planned approach to our infrastructure issues, removing the shameless cherry-picking and pork-barrelling of the previous government.

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