Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to this motion. I am pleased that we are talking about the Pacific Highway but not pleased that we are still talking about trying to get the New South Wales government to honour the commitment that they gave to a fifty-fifty funding split. They should just really get on with it.

I listened very carefully to the honourable member for Cowper's contribution. The member for Cowper said in this place in a motion on notice:

The Pacific Highway is a state road designed, built, owned and maintained by the New South Wales state government. The Pacific Highway is a state road.

The member for Cowper said that people on the North Coast are sick of the bickering. And they are, I know, I am a local—I represent the local people. They are sick of the bickering but they are also sick of the litany of lies that have been told about the funding commitments for the Pacific Highway. I want to put some facts on the public record now. Barry O'Farrell on 8 March:

Only the New South Wales Liberals and Nationals are committed to completing the upgrade of the Pacific Highway by 2016.

John Howard, 16 October 2007:

My government's preference remains for the duplication to be completed by 2016 in line with our 2004 commitment.

A further quote:

The coalition government is willing to provide our share of the additional funding needed to fully duplicate by 2016 if the New South Wales government will match our funding commitment to a faster completion.

That covers two things. That shows that there was that discussion early on, that there was a willingness to talk about the duplication by 2016, and also that there was a fifty-fifty shared funding split with the New South Wales government. On 10 October 2007, Duncan Gay, the New South Wales Minister for Roads, who was then a member of the Legislative Council, said in Hansard:

I would have hoped this time that he—

meaning the then roads minister Eric Roozendaal—

would have been a statesman and said, 'Yes, I'll match that money and save the lives of people in New South Wales that use the highway.'

That goes to the commitment to matching funding. I have heard it said by Nationals members in the House today that the Leader of the New South Wales Nationals Andrew Stoner said it would be impossible to have 2016 as the date the Pacific Highway could be duplicated and that, ages ago, he was saying something different. I will quote Andrew Stoner from the New South Wales Hansard of 16 February 2012. He said it was 'something completely impossible given the size of our state's road transport network and our unfair and inadequate revenue base'. That was not ages ago; it was 16 February 2012.

Further, Andrew Stoner said in the Northern Star on 20 July 2011 that 'the date remains plausible as long as both governments commit to it'. And I have got a whole lot of quotes that clearly show they were saying 2016 would be the operative date. When I say 'they' I mean the New South Wales government and, in particular members of the New South Wales National Party. There are three state members of the National Party in my seat, and one of them is a minister. They have had a lot to say about the Pacific Highway over time, and I will come to that.

But I come back to the fifty-fifty issue. A lot of locals say: 'We don't care who funds it, we just want it funded, we just want it done.' And I agree with them: we do not care at that level. But I do care when people are elected into public positions on an issue like the Pacific Highway—particularly the National Party members. They have given these commitments all the way through. They have inveigled, they have called on other people to make sure they honour that fifty-fifty funding split, and then when it comes to the 2016 deadline, at the first opportunity they get they run away from it at 100 miles per hour. Why aren't they honourable enough to fess up and say, 'We aren't going to do this, but this is what we are going to do'? First of all they construct this 80-20 funding split. Extra money is allocated to the Pacific Highway from the federal government. It is stimulus money. If you have a look at the tabulation of the money that has been available, you can see it. It is there. And then they turn around and use it like a weapon and say it is 80-20. It was not 80-20 and they know it. And it shows in some of their budget papers. It was fifty-fifty.

And then we come to the next astounding allegations. They are actually just lies. I have got one here. I got one last night that came through in a newsletter by the Nationals MP for Clarence, Chris Gulaptis. He talks about getting on with the job of the funding of works on the Pacific Highway, saying 'despite a shock $2.3 billion funding cut in the Gillard government's May budget'—another lie. They just put spin on anything. I cannot believe it. They are putting it out with taxpayers paying for it, and it is another pack of lies.

The minister for roads, when he was in the upper house—it was earlier this year, I think, in May—started that too. So there are two things. They try to squirm out of the commitment they clearly gave to fifty-fifty funding, and, worse than that, they claimed that only they could deliver it, only they could fix it. And then they constructed this 80-20 split that never existed. It started under John Howard, and John Howard spoke about it in this place many times. It was fifty-fifty. And now they are going on about it being a funding cut. The $3.56 billion available in the federal budget is not what I would call a funding cut, and the $4.1 billion that has been allocated from the federal government thus far for the Pacific Highway clearly is not a funding cut. For the 12 years that the Howard government was in, around $1.3 billion was allocated.

But there is more. The New South Wales Treasurer in his budget speech on 6 September 2011 said:

In its last Budget, the Commonwealth allocated $750 million for the Pacific Highway but only on the condition that the NSW Government matched this amount.

Yes, the fifty-fifty. The state Treasurer went on:

We are determined to provide the funds needed to match this Commonwealth offer.

That gives credibility to the fifty-fifty but, more than that, when you look at the New South Wales budget papers, it shows that they did not even match that. It was $468 million that was actually allocated at that time, even though they said they were 'determined to provide the funds needed to match the Commonwealth offer'. That was done at the time and I can remember it clearly. It says it was $750 million from the federal budget. I remember that there was around $1 billion and there was a sum of around $250 million negotiated that could go somewhere else, because the state government wanted to do it.

I now come to the Leader of the Nationals in this place. I heard him talk today. He said the coalition had made enormous strides towards duplicating the Pacific Highway beginning in 1996 when they began to share funding responsibility with the two state governments. (Time expired)

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