Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

particularly if he thinks he might be on the news! The traffic news every morning notes what is happening in and out of Singleton because of the commuter traffic heading to the coalmines. We still have a very healthy coalmining industry in the Hunter region—and may we do so for many years to come. Traffic through Singleton is a nightmare. Despite the New South Wales government making a lot of noise about a bypass over the period since 2011, we still don't even have a fixed route option. I am going to let the Turnbull government off the hook here. The Turnbull government can't fund a Singleton bypass if there is not a Singleton bypass to fund. Until the New South Wales government produces a project, it is pretty hard for the Commonwealth to fund the project. So I appeal to the New South Wales government to get on with it, give Singleton the bypass it deserves and give those who are in that traffic nightmare on a daily basis the relief they deserve.

The fourth project relates to Cessnock, my home town. Cessnock is another high-growth area in the Hunter region. It is growing rapidly. Of course, that is partly because people are attracted to the beauty of our wine tourism and other attractions. The problem is that with the way Cessnock has developed historically, with its periphery of mining communities, everyone living in any of those villages or new housing estates goes to the CBD every morning or afternoon as they exit or re-enter the town. That is a traffic nightmare. The council is acutely aware of the problem and has identified a solution. That solution is twofold. It includes Cessnock ring road which will allow commuters to exit their suburbs around Cessnock out of town without going through the CBD and to come in the same way. It will also link Cessnock city to the new Labor funded and built Hunter Expressway, which would give people a quick exit to Newcastle and other places to which they might be commuting.

This is not an inexpensive project, I concede. In fact the ring road would be in the order of $174 million, and the link to the expressway and the required interchange would be expensive projects. But the economic return would be enormous. There is an inevitability about this project. This will have to be done at some point, and the state government and federal government should get on with supporting council's plans to do so.

There is another element. Sadly, more than a year ago Cessnock had thrust upon it a massive expansion of the corrections centre right on the edge of the town. It's virtually in the town, I would argue. It is only hundreds of metres to residential streets. The state government decided it would change its own planning laws so that council and residents could raise no objections and so that this project would not be subject to the scrutiny of council or local communities. There was very little consultation and very little opportunity for people to express their concerns about the impact of that massive jail expansion on Cessnock and its community.

I want to say at the outset that I do acknowledge and recognise the benefits of the expansion to Cessnock, both in construction opportunities and the impact on the community and on an ongoing basis, because the jail will be easily the city's largest employer. So I want to acknowledge that there are benefits to Cessnock. The New South Wales government would have had a significant level of support from the community if it had gone about this thing the right way, not changed its planning laws to protect its own decision and: provided a new entry and exit out of the jail so that substantial traffic movements are not going into residential streets; increased police numbers in Cessnock to deal with any antisocial impacts from the expansion; and made sure our hospital had the facilities necessary to deal with prisoners who might need to visit. That would not have been asking much. How many of those three key points have been recognised and addressed by the New South Wales government? Not one.

So it's time for the New South Wales government to make up for its mistakes. It's time for it to get serious about the ring road. It's time for it to get serious about ready access between the township of Cessnock and the Hunter Expressway. Of course, the ring road would provide a new entry and exit out of the jail, taking those traffic movements out of the residential streets of Cessnock. These are residential streets, of course, that the council has to maintain on an annual basis. So it's an easy opportunity for Premier Berejiklian and her government to make up for the massive expansion in Cessnock and to reward the residents of Cessnock for accommodating the jail expansion, keeping in mind that that jail generates enormous income for the New South Wales government.

Ms Burney interjecting—

I hear the member for Barton agreeing. She as a former member of the New South Wales parliament would know this. Enormous revenue comes to the New South Wales government as a result of that jail, and that revenue is going to increase over time. So the residents of Cessnock should be compensated for what this expansion is doing for our image, arguably. Being known as the place of potentially the biggest jail in the Southern Hemisphere is not exactly what we're looking for as a town promoting ourselves as a wine tourism destination. They should be compensated for the impact on the roads and on the hospital. We see prisoners being brought into the emergency department at Cessnock jumping the queue, the queue where local residents have been sitting and waiting for a protracted period of time.

Residents are conscious of these issues. They know about the adverse impacts. But, as I said, they know that benefits come too, and they will accept that in net terms. They will accept that the benefits are there and that maybe the benefits can overcome the negatives of the project. But they will only do that if the New South Wales government gets serious about properly developing the project—that is, making sure the road issues are addressed, the health issues are addressed and the social issues are addressed. Until the New South Wales government is prepared to do that, it will not have wide support from the Cessnock community. The Cessnock ring-road is a fantastic project—something that is inevitable, something that has to be done, something that will allow Cessnock to grow without the usual growing pains, or at least minimise the growing pains. It's a great opportunity for New South Wales to get serious. We now have that jail expansion. I say to the Premier that there's not much we can do about that, but you can compensate us by backing some of these very important projects.

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