Emma McBride (Dobell, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Out of necessity, Central Coast Council this week voted to enter into a funding agreement with the Morrison government to accept a $70 million roads package. That sounds like a good headline number, and our region needs a boost in road funding—the NRMA has named the Central Coast as having one of the biggest transport infrastructure backlogs in the whole of New South Wales—but it disguises the facts of the Liberals' so-called Central Coast roads commitment. The fact is that this Liberal roads package is not a package for the Central Coast; it's a package for the Liberal-held electorate of Robertson. Over 90 per cent of the road spending provided by this government, $63.4 million, will be spent on roads south of Wamberal. My electorate, which covers the northern area of the Central Coast, will receive only 9.2 per cent of the funding, or $6.4 million. Dobell is the part of the Central Coast earmarked for significant population growth over the next 20 years.

Can the Prime Minister please tell the people of my electorate of Dobell, the people of the northern area of the Central Coast, why the federal government will be spending $419 per person on roads in Robertson over the next four years but only $39 per person on roads in Dobell? I call on this government to put road safety ahead of politics and properly fund roads in Dobell.