Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. The Roads to Recovery Program is very important for our nation. There have been significant benefits for local government areas around the country, and this motion is a good one. I commend the member for O'Connor for putting it forward. It does recognise the real and meaningful difference the Roads to Recovery Program is making in communities right across our nation, including in my electorate of Solomon and including in my friend the member for Lingiari's electorate, which, like the member for Durack's electorate, is a big bit of dirt.

Roads are incredibly important for the economy and for us to be able to harness the massive potential of rural and regional Australia, particularly in the Territory. I'll just quickly go to my electorate. The city of Darwin, in this financial year, received $862,000 from the program, and the city of Palmerston received $411,000 from the program, with more to come in the next couple of years. There are many local government areas in the member for Lingiari's electorate that are receiving much-needed funding. Dirt roads in particular, if they're invested in, are a boon for our mango industry—that's one example—our beef industry as well as agriculture across the board and increasingly aquaculture. What congests our roads is a bit different to the big cities. Miles and miles of corrugated roads rattle the trucks that get our produce to market. So that is an expense to the farmers and, in the case of mangoes, it bruises the fruit, so any funding for those main roads in the Territory is always going to be welcome.

Roads opened up large parts of the Northern Territory to the cattle industry about 60 years ago—and this is really nation-building stuff—opening up vast areas of bush. This created a very important industry not only for the Northern Territory but for our nation that we continue to develop. Road development is an enabler of economic growth, improves productivity and unlocks the economic potential I mentioned. It enables us to access land which is in the best interests of not only industry but in our case in the Northern Territory regional communities such as those that First Nations people inhabit. Roads to Recovery is an important program, and that is why I've seconded this motion.

I also want to call on the government to do more to fund roads in the Northern Territory and around the country with a view to the merit of those programs. We've seen recently some grant funding delivered by the current federal government that to any reasonable person would be seen as being based more on politics than merit. So I want to caution the government: people in regional Australia are keeping an eye on things like the road congestion funding. A lot of urban Labor seats missed out on this congestion-busting funding to fix up our roads and improve efficiencies while some rural regional seats received this funding, like Corangamite, for example. Now, I've got nothing against the people in Corangamite, but there are rural roads around this country that also need funding so it would be much better if the federal government put the needs of our nation first when it comes to using grant funding such as the road congestion funding, rather than their own political interests. I hope that can happen. I support the Roads to Recovery program, and I thank the House.

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