Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is great to be again re-elected by the good people of La Trobe, and I thank them very much. It is also fantastic to be sitting beside the new member for Dunkley. Today he gave a fantastic maiden speech and should be very proud of his achievement. I also listened to all the new members' maiden speeches in recent weeks. They show the quality of new members who have entered the House on both sides of parliament.

During the election campaign I had a number of people raise with me the issues of crime. One person at the Berwick train station advised me how his wife was involved in an attempted carjacking at one of the local shopping centres. I had not actually heard of that happening in the local area before. Then I had two or three other people straight after the campaign let me know that they had been subjected to a run-through of their premises. From the knowledge we gathered, it was actually the Apex gang involved in entering houses. One time it was four in the morning and was done with the view of stealing some car keys. They actually came back three times.

I previously raised this issue after the Moomba festival, when the Apex gang actually did a run-through of the Melbourne CBD, which horrified Melburnians. That is when I first really became aware of the Apex gang. The Apex name actually comes from a street in Dandenong the founders of the gang decided to name their gang after. I did warn it is going to get worse, and it actually has got worse. Sadly, in recent times we have seen this incredible situation where we have police cars being rammed by offenders, and I have never seen that before. As a former police officer, I am greatly concerned to see this occurring. Recently, one of the members of Victoria Police actually had to shoot an offender. The offender was killed during the incident.

I have previously called and will continue to call. No. 1, there is a severe lack of police numbers in the City of Casey and surrounds. In my time as a police officer, when you used to work an afternoon shift at, say, in Boronia or the Melbourne CBD you would normally have maybe two divisional vans on the road and a car at the same time. I am hearing that down at Narre Warren they have only got one car or one van on in the afternoon shift, and the same goes with Pakenham. Endeavour Hills's police station has been cut back on the weekend. With the growth of City of Casey and Cardinia, this is just a ridiculous situation, and the state Labor government must get serious about getting on top of this gang violence.

I have called for and continued to call for the National Anti-Gangs Squad to get involved. That is joint AFP and state police. When they team up together, they have been very effective on the outlaw motorcycle gang members, but they now need to focus on violent gangs such as the Apex gang. They are not a street gang. Someone breaking into your house at three in the morning and terrorising your entire family is not a street gang.

This brings me to a community crime prevention info forum we had on the weekend. I congratulate Andrew Hartley for arranging this at Sweeney Reserve. We also thank the rapid-response team for providing food. We probably had 300 members of the public turn up, which is very significant. They were all concerned about the crime occurring in their area. I was speaking to a gentleman by the name of Craig who was telling me that, last Sunday or the Sunday before, he was having dinner at home at seven o'clock at night with the family. Lo and behold, he heard some noise in the garage, walked through the kitchen, realised someone had stolen the car keys and was endeavouring to steal the car. He disturbed them and they left.

There is a lot of work to do in this area. Once you get a gang of 300 or 400 members, it is at a tipping point where, sadly, because of the state Labor government, even though they have very hardworking detectives and police working on this, they need extra resources. That is where again I say to my own government that we need to help out simply because the state Labor government has completely failed.

At this forum on the weekend I also said to the residents that we do actually live in a great place in La Trobe—in this case, the City of Casey—and talked about a project called Bunjil Place. I congratulate again the City of Casey. It is a $125 million project involving performing arts, visual arts, a library and a civic centre there. The quality will be state of the art. It will be good enough, for example, for the Russian ballet to come over or for an international art exhibition to show their works there. This is the great thing about where we actually live. It has been a focus of the coalition. Obviously, the Labor Party gets all uppity-uppity over jobs and growth, but that is simply what we are trying to do—we are trying to create jobs and growth.

That brings me to some other great announcements we had during the election campaign. This is one of my favourites and this is something which I was looking at a number of years ago. I always thought it would be a great idea to restore one of the old red rattler trains, which as a child I used to catch to school. I must admit that 35 years ago we all hated them, but now we have become nostalgic and we all love the old red rattler trains. For those who are listening who do not know what I am talking about, if you look at the Harry Potter movies that is pretty much what a red rattler looks like. We are planning to restore a red rattler train. I thank John Robinson, the CEO of Puffing Billy, for getting behind the project; Adrian, who has been a great supporter; and also the Clark brothers, who have dedicated pretty much their whole life to restoring these old trains. Sadly, a number of years ago, one which had nearly been fully restored in the Melbourne depot in Williamstown was destroyed by an arsonist, which was truly a tragic event.

Under the Turnbull government we have committed $1 million for the restoration and we very much look forward to seeing one of these red rattler trains leaving the Melbourne CBD and going along the Belgrave train line with both interstate and international tourists. Remember that Puffing Billy has over 400,000 tourists each year. The only issue is that on a wet day in winter if you catch Puffing Billy and get off at Emerald Lake Park there is really not much to do apart from walk around the lake in the wet. It is great in summer but not that much fun in winter. John Robinson and his team have put together a $12 million proposal for an Emerald discovery centre looking at the history of Puffing Billy and also, as I discussed with them, looking at the overall history of the Dandenong Ranges and capturing our history. Again this is a great tourist opportunity which will create jobs in the area.

Whilst we are talking about things up in Emerald, we have also committed $1 million towards a walk—actually the missing link—from Cockatoo to Gembrook. This will be used by horse riders, cyclists and walkers. Again, it is something that will be very good for tourists and also for the local residents, who are very excited about this.

We come back to the other side of the Dandenong Ranges. I have the firm view that, if we can get more people to work locally and use the Dandenong Ranges for its beauty in the tourism area, we will get fewer people driving on the Monash, which we know is a nightmare. One of the projects there is called the Ridge Walk, but I call it the heritage walk. It is going to be 14 kilometres of walking paths from Upwey right across to Montrose, connecting all our historic little townships there. It will be great for traders, great for walkers and great for tourists.

I thank very much Ali Wastie from the Yarra Ranges Council, who has worked on another project with me. I had previously applied for National Heritage Listing of the Dandenong Ranges based on our famous landscape artists. For example, we have Horatio's house on Blackwood Street, Tecoma. For those who do not know, Horatio was a First World War veteran. In actual fact, Horatio was engaged to Caroline Hearst, whose father was the richest man in America, but they actually called off the engagement because he suffered injuries during the war. He ended up building this house out of kerosene tins. The Heidelberg Artists Society would come and visit. Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Sir Arthur Boyd would come and create some of their masterpieces there. Also, CJ Dennis wrote The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke in the electorate of La Trobe, and Indigenous artist Lin Onus created so many great works there. So it is unique. With the Yarra Ranges Council we want to apply again for National Heritage of the Dandenong Ranges and to link it with these 14 kilometres of walks, which I am very excited about.

There is also the Mount Dandenong Tourist Road. We have had a number of issues with cyclists using the road. After Cadel Evans won the Tour de France the Dandenong Ranges have never been the same because every weekend we have countless cyclists coming up. They have the right to go up there, but it has also become exceptionally dangerous for cyclists and for local residents. So we have $10 million to actually address the safety issues for the cyclists and assist the locals. I very much thank Minister Paul Fletcher for getting behind that project.

Now I know the member for Aston will nearly fall out of his seat when I talk about this: the 1,000 Steps drinking taps. I do not actually know when the 1,000 Steps were constructed, but I assume it must have been in the 1920s. They go from the base of the Upper Ferntree Gully National Park up to One Tree Hill. Whoever built these stairs had a fantastic sense of humour because the last 40 or 50 stairs are at least four feet apart and on a very steep angle. It is an absolute fitness test. Because of this we have so many people regularly coming up. I know the member for Aston loves going up there and getting on the stairs. We committed $50,000 towards this project. The reason is, sadly, a lot of people leave their drinking bottles around there, and the park rangers have much better things to do than go around picking up bottles which people have left behind. So we are looking at installing three drinking taps. We obviously will need to work with the state Labor government on this issue. Again, this is something I am very proud we got behind and supported.

In the last couple of minutes I would like to talk about another very important issue, and that is the Monash Freeway. We have a billion-dollar plan for the Monash, and I thank the Prime Minister for that plan. Our plan is actually an extra lane from Warrigal Road right up to Cardinia Road. The state Labor government and the federal Labor opposition cannot see the value of actually extending the extra lane on the Monash from Clyde Road out to Cardinia Road.

The growth figures out in the suburbs like Officer, Beaconsfield and Cranbourne are just horrendous. Even in the next three years I know there are probably going to be another 30,000 residents moving into that area. Everyone always blames government for not having the vision. Well, Mr Deputy Speaker, they should try having a vision here and actually take this road right out to Cardinia—an extra lane there. And to be on the safe side it is probably going to need another extra lane in the future even after that. The opposition leader and the Premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, have to realise that they have to get behind this project. They need to support it.

Also part of our commitment are the on-off ramps at the Beaconsfield Exchange, which will greatly improve traffic, and extending O'Shea Road from Eden Rise shopping centre to the Beaconsfield Exchange, which will finally give a focus to the portion of the land there to be used for innovation and advanced manufacturing. We want to see the tourist jobs in the Dandenong Ranges and we want to see the innovation and advanced manufacturing jobs in the south of the electorate, and take pressure off the Monash. This is where the Prime Minister's vision for innovation and advanced manufacturing will be what we are doing in La Trobe. That is what we are going to achieve, and this should be rolling out in the next couple of years.

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