Joanna Gash (Gilmore, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week New South Wales Premier Kristina Keneally directed her RTA to no longer make any mention of projections to extend the F6 highway that runs from Sydney to Wollongong. She is not interested in maintaining infrastructure in the Illawarra to keep up with population growth. Last week, also, the federal minister for roads, Anthony Albanese, came on local radio and confirmed his government was not interested in contributing to the upgrade of the Princes Highway in the Illawarra and South Coast and will not be chipping in any money. As far as this highway is concerned, the New South Wales Labor government has admitted it has run out of money to support South Coast residents, and the federal Labor government has come out and confirmed it is equally uncaring about South Coast residents. Both Labor governments have turned their backs on South Coast residents.

To add insult to injury, Labor has selected a candidate for Gilmore who does not even live in the electorate. This should hardly be a surprise when you have a look at the track record of Labor candidates being parachuted into Illawarra seats in recent times. A few weeks ago on the ABC, Andy Gillespie, local trade union identity, was railing against the parachuting of Lylea McMahon into the state seat of Shellharbour. Throsby is having a candidate parachuted in to replace outgoing member Jennie George. So it begs the question: if they don’t care about their own party members and what they might have to say, how much do they care about the people they are purporting to represent?

The real story behind the debate over the Princes Highway is not about finding the money—both the federal and state Labor governments have hauled out billions to fund their pet projects as it suited them; the real story is all about Labor’s hidden agenda. It is about lip-service and growing power, the lack of sincerity and a lack of commitment to the people of the Illawarra. They have been taken for granted for so long and it is becoming glaringly obvious that they will continue to be. We always seem to end up at the bottom of the food chain as far as Labor governments go, so it was with some surprise that Anthony Albanese could come on local radio last week and spruik that the coalition was not funding the Princes Highway. It has probably escaped him that his government and the New South Wales Labor government have committed billions to roadworks within Sydney and northwards, while at the same time snubbing the Illawarra and South Coast. It has escaped him that it is he who is in government and that as a federal roads minister he is the best placed person to approve funding for the Princes Highway and the upgrade of the F6. Instead he chooses to carp about the coalition, using spin and distorting and manipulating the facts.

The fact is that, during our term in government, we delivered $68 million in additional funding to the upgrade of the Princes Highway on the South Coast, and the Leader of the Opposition recently committed another $20 million, if elected to government. The state opposition has also committed and reaffirmed its commitment, time and time again, of an extra $200 million for remedial work along the Princes Highway, from Wollongong to the Victorian border. But, even in the face of the facts, Labor continues to twist the truth and drag its heels in providing funding of any substance to the Illawarra. It is not only roads that are chronically underfunded; it is hospitals, schools, police, community service—and the list and waste goes on. Mr Albanese’s statement on 2ST last week was a pathetic and nasty attempt at raw politics, absent of any commitment towards the Illawarra and in denial of the situation with local party members. It is a case of constant blunders and blah, blah, blah.