David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to take this opportunity to once again call on the New South Wales government to fast-track the design and planning of new interchanges on the Pacific Highway between Port Macquarie and Newcastle. This week I was delighted that the federal government was able to deliver $48 million in this year's federal budget towards the Harrington to Coopernook intersection grade separated interchange, commonly known as a flyover. This project will undoubtedly save lives. Fortunately some of the planning process and the preliminary earthworks have been done on this important project and, therefore, the federal government was able to allocate funding through the budget process to get this project underway.

Many would be aware that the Pacific Highway, an artery of transport and tourism, is rapidly becoming busier and busier. The focus on the upgrade was, first and foremost, to duplicate the highway up to the Queensland border and to come back later to manage the major intersections with grade separated interchanges. With the significant population growth—and many centres like Harrington, Coopernook and that valley are growing rapidly—it is now all the more important that all the major intersections along the Pacific Highway between Port Macquarie and the Queensland border have grade separated interchanges.

As we have done north of Port Macquarie, we should now address this in the southern section. I have called for a new phase of the Pacific Highway upgrade program which seeks further federal and state investment to complete the upgrade at the following major intersections: Italia Road, Medowie Road and Bucketts Way in the Hunter; further north, at Failford Road, which leads into Forster-Tuncurry; the one I just mentioned at Harrington and Coopernook; Houston Mitchell Drive leading into Lake Cattai and Bonny Hills; and further upgrades to the Oxley Highway interchange between Wauchope and Port Macquarie to improve capacity.

After making many representations to both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister about this initiative, I'm absolutely pleased to see that $48 million of federal funding is coming out of the 2020-21 budget to make this project get off the ground. It's now absolutely critical that the New South Wales government—specifically, Transport for New South Wales—brings forward, as a matter of urgency, design and planning so that federal and state funding can get these intersections upgraded. It will not only significantly improve safety; it will also deliver an important economic boost to this region.

It's a $60 million project to build this grade separated interchange. Currently, people are playing dodgem, playing chicken, weaving between four lanes of traffic to get from one side of the highway, at Coopernook, over to Harrington or vice versa. To leave Harrington and travel north you have to negotiate four lanes of traffic barrelling down the freeway at 100 kilometres an hour—and many people are going 110 kilometres an hour or more. For people going to Harrington who have a caravan or trailer, or if there are any B-doubles coming in and out, it's an absolute nightmare. It's the same around Bucketts Way, Italia Road and Medowie Road. Traffic coming down from the upper Hunter through Bucketts Way queues up for many cars. And then, if you've got B-doubles bringing freight and produce down—can you imagine how quickly a B-double can start from zero kilometres an hour at an intersection and get across four lanes? It's really dangerous. We need to work on this.

Failford Road is incredibly busy in tourism periods. Every holiday, every long weekend, there are huge backlogs. They have done some work on it to have extra slipways and there are other slipways planned. But I think they need planning and design work, starting now, so that we can get the federal funds and marry it with the state funds and get these intersections improved.