Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I hear the member for Newcastle agreeing. We cannot afford to allow people to continue to lie dormant while we have this inflationary effect in the local economy and while we have so many employers unable to get the people they need to fill the jobs they need filled. Of course, that is a brake on our growth, because we cannot grow more economically if we continue to allow people to lie idle.

Dealing with those already sitting in those pockets is one thing, and that is a speech for another day. It is a complex issue, but we cannot allow another generation of young people to come in and fall into that same trap. That is what our trade training schools are all about. That is what our science labs are all about. That is what the $600 million the government is spending on skills is all about. It is what the Apprenticeship Kickstart program is all about. Trades training centres will intervene early and get kids worked up to the skills they need to take up those opportunities. I will continue to pursue that as an issue and to support the many very strong programs the government is rolling out to address those problems. I will just mention that we spent $7 million on Kurri Kurri TAFE as part of the stimulus package, a sum which does not come along every day.

It is amazing how good can come out of adversity. We had a global recession. The government found it necessary to spend money to keep us out of recession, and we are getting all these benefits that one would not have dreamed about. I could run off a list of community projects in my electorate which were not gold-plating; they were infrastructure projects that were required and that would never have been built if it had not been for what was a very well targeted economic stimulus package.

I want to stay on growth but turn to some of the impacts on infrastructure. In my region the biggest impact—in addition to child care, doctor shortages et cetera—is road infrastructure. When I leave this place, rightly or wrongly, probably my greatest achievement will be the $1.7 billion Hunter Expressway, which will do more than anything to clear the traffic nightmare through the Hunter region between Newcastle and the Upper Hunter, along with the third river crossing, in Maitland—I congratulate the state government on that. It will certainly reduce the congestion in Maitland, which was the second fastest growing city in Australia last time I checked. Maybe it is now the fastest, but it was second to Mandurah, in Western Australia, last time I checked.

These infrastructure shortfalls need addressing. I put my own government on notice again that I have a very high expectation that the proceeds from the new mining tax will be redirected into mining communities, into infrastructure projects in those regions—including my own—and into road upgrades in addition to the Hunter Expressway, such as a bypass of the townships of Singleton and Muswellbrook. In addition to millions of tourists, many coalminers drive through the Hunter’s wine country to get to work as they move further into the Upper Hunter region and we have to do something about our vineyard region’s roads.

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