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

I too would like to speak on the appropriation bills and, in particular, about spending in the electorate of La Trobe. For those who do not know, La Trobe covers from the Dandenong Ranges in the north with suburbs such as Ferny Creek and Olinda and then goes right across to places like Emerald and Cockatoo and further down south, where there is an incredible growth corridor with suburbs such as Narre Warren, Narre Warren South, Beaconsfield, Officer and, of course, Berwick. Up to 250 families are moving each week into the shires of Cardinia and Casey, so it's a very, very fast-growing corridor, even when compared with the rest of Australia.

We've been very much focused on supporting community groups. Why do we do that under the Turnbull government? You find that if you make very strong communities and support—for example, the Men's Shed, woodworkers' clubs, the RSL, the Scouts and Guides and the sporting clubs—that's great for the community and keeps the community engaged. It's good for their health and wellbeing.

In the south of the electorate, as I said, with its huge growth corridor, one of the big issues has been transportation. You can imagine that with so many people moving into this area it does put huge pressure on local roads. One of the biggest roads we have in the electorate—in fact the biggest—is the Monash Freeway. I was greatly concerned and I lobbied back in March 2006 that an extra lane was needed on the Freeway—it could in fact have two lanes. We had the announcement with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull that $500 million—which, sadly, was left over from money not spent by the state Labor government on the East-West Link—but we got that for the Monash. The announcement was in March 2016 for an extra lane that went all the way from the Warrigal Road connection to Cardinia Road. I would specifically like to thank Minister Paul Fletcher, who was heavily involved in the concept of where the road would finish. As I said to him, the growth in Officer in the next 10 years will be quite incredible. I think it will be in the vicinity of 50,000 people. You always hear the complaint, 'Governments do not have a vision.' Well, we wanted to make sure we had a vision to ensure that the road would actually meet the growth in that local area.

Also importantly, too, we wanted to improve the traffic movement of local residents. In particular, Clyde Road is a road which each morning is nearly clogged up for local residents. We have so many families in La Trobe. We have mums and dads dropping off kids at school and, when they get to Clyde Road, they try to sneak around to Soldiers Road if they are going to, say, Hillcrest college. It is just an absolute traffic jam, including people trying to get on to the Monash. I was approached by both Casey council and Cardinia council at the same time a number of years back to say: 'As part of this Monash proposal, we really need the Turnbull government to include the extension of O'Shea Road from Soldiers Road right to where we would see the Beaconsfield interchange. It currently has two on-off ramps. It needs to be completed with two more on-off ramps.' That would mean, for example, residents coming through from Pakenham would no longer need to go into Berwick and go down south on Clyde Road. They could go to the Beaconsfield interchange and go straight through O'Shea Road and go down to the southern parts of Victoria if need be—areas like Frankston—by missing Clyde Road. It's of great benefit to local residents.

Also, too, with the opening up of the Beaconsfield interchange and extension of O'Shea Road, there is Minta Farm, which is a large allotment of land. This has been zoned by councils to be used for innovation and advanced manufacturing jobs. It is not industrial but innovation and advanced manufacturing jobs. I speak to so many local businesses that are very keen to go into this area. This will create, once opened, an incredible 10,000 local jobs in that area. The whole purpose is to stop people travelling to the CBD. But there is a disappointing aspect to this. We made the announcement back in March 2016. Here we have an area where we could create 10,000 jobs at Beaconsfield interchange and make the lives of local residents so much better. Sadly, we saw in the May 2017 budget from the state Labor government that out of that $500 million, after spending $2.5 million on the business case, it has decided to spend money on only the sections between South Gippsland Highway and Clyde Road. I acknowledge that that is obviously very important, but it's not going right out to Warrigal Road and Cardinia Road. Most of that funding, I believe, is from Transurban, which means tolls for people in the south-east when they use the Monash Freeway. In particular, from the CBD down to Toorak Road will be hit with tolls for another 10 years. I have numerous times called on Premier Daniel Andrews to get on with the job, to relieve the stress and to get on with building with the money. It just seems quite ridiculous. We have had $500 million in federal funding for nearly two years, coming up in April, which has not been spent on one road, the Monash, which is so vital, especially when we talk about those 10,000 jobs.

We saw some good news with projects which opened recently. There was Bunjil Place. Again, I congratulate Casey council. For anyone in Victoria listening in, it's beside Fountain Gate. It's an incredible $125 million project which the Turnbull government committed $10 million for. I recently had the opening with the former mayor Sam Aziz and the councils down there. The Casey council had an incredible vision to open a performing arts centre. From memory, it's in the vicinity of 800 seats. The architecture of Bunjil Place is quite incredible. The wooden framing outside—and I do it no justice by calling it wooden framing—is a beautiful piece of art. It was constructed in Germany, and the builders who had to reconstruct it had to work within millimetres. It's got an amazing entrance.

Bunjil Place is named after the Aboriginal mythical creature, Bunjil—an eagle. They designed it in the shape of an eagle, and it looks absolutely incredible. I took the Treasurer down there, and he was absolutely blown away by how good this facility was and how much it means to the families of La Trobe, especially those in the south-east. That's what happens when the Turnbull government invests money, in this case $10 million. I also should say that it is in the seat of Holt, and I acknowledge the member for Holt for his interest in and commitment to this project. It's a fantastic local facility.

I also had the great pleasure of going to the opening of the Belgrave South Community Sports Pavilion recently. They had their official opening in November 2017. I previously committed $250,000 as an election commitment, and the entire project was in the vicinity of $2 million. It will benefit 419 people from the local area. What they've done down there just looks great. I'd also like to thank Ian Bakens and his team down there and to say that they had probably the best sporting event I've ever been to: it was a Black Caviar event. It was an incredible event to kick off the project and to get it up and running. When I was a candidate in 2017, I was blown away by how good it was, and that's why we made the election commitment. I'd like to also acknowledge the others from the Belgrave South community and various groups who were involved. It was a very exciting project, and it's now open to the public. We also gave them funding towards their lights.

We committed $250,000 to the Beaconsfield Football Club to upgrade, to seal, their car park. It's now a bitumen car park. The council is also working to get a skateboard centre for the local kids to give them something to do. We're also helping them get some funding for a storage shed. I would like to acknowledge the president of Beaconsfield Football Club, Troy Robinson, the senior coach, Leigh McQuillan, and the head of football operations, Darren Hamilton, for their efforts. Also, very shortly, the Upwey CRASH project will be opening, with the Upwey football and cricket clubs and all the sporting groups locating there. I'd like to thank Andrew Peterson for the work he's done. The old clubrooms were probably there for 40 or 50 years, especially the Upwey one. They've been demolished. It's just so great for the local area and for the community to get involved in those sorts of projects.

Also, up in Mount Dandenong, we committed $10 million at the last election for the Mount Dandenong tourist road upgrade. It's particular focus is on the cyclists. Cadel Evans—it was fantastic to see Evans win the Tour de France—is up there every weekend in the Dandenong Ranges. We have cyclists coming from absolutely everywhere, which is fantastic. The only thing is: it becomes very frustrating for the local residents. So, rather than complain—and we had some people saying we should ban the cyclists, which is something we would never do—we committed funding to look at improving its usage for cyclists and others. I thank VicRoads for the work and also the Shire of Yarra Ranges. We will need more money for it. I believe, after speaking to VicRoads, that the total project will be in the vicinity of over $30 million. We did approach the state Labor government, and they basically came back and said it wasn't a priority. I think it's a big priority and I think we need to work together and have the state Labor government put some funding into this project.

The same goes for Ridge Walk, which is a walk from Montrose right across to Upwey. It is to connect all the townships from Sassafras to Olinda to Mount Dandenong to Kalorama, and actually to really focus on the famous landscape artists of the hills and have an arts focus, because I really want to focus on creating tourism jobs up in the Dandenong Ranges. I'm very excited about that because we have this amazing tradition of artists in the hills, with Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton and Arthur Boyd. Artists have created all these amazing works in the Dandenong Ranges, including Aboriginal artist Lin Onus. So we really want to focus on that, and we have committed $2.5 million to the project. We do need the state Labor government to commit.

This project is not only good for telling or capturing the history of the area but also good for local residents, to walk in and experience the area. The footpaths in the hills aren't that great, but this project should make it a lot easier to walk through the parks. Some of the parks, as we see now in Sherbrooke Forest, are fantastic to walk through. In winter, though, it is pretty boggy, so we will be looking at having boardwalks. I'm very excited about the work we are doing with the council on that.

We have committed $5.5 million for Puffing Billy, for the Emerald discovery centre. That is in the planning phase. We've also committed $1 million to restore an old red rattler train, and I thank all those involved in assisting with that restoration. It will be so amazing and exciting when we have the first restored train come out from the CBD to Belgrave, to connect to Puffing Billy.

Finally, I had another commitment for the 1,000 Steps walk, for drinking taps. I remember people—this is more the media—being critical about having $50,000 for drinking taps at the start of the steps and at the top. Well, can I say: while I've been giving my speech, I reckon there would've been probably 100 people using those drinking taps, so that was money well spent.

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