Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes the Government's ongoing commitment to improving connectivity for regional businesses, and better connecting regional communities through the Roads of Strategic Importance (ROSI) initiative;

(2) recognises that the ROSI initiative upgrades key freight roads to efficiently connect agricultural and mining regions to ports, airports and other transport hubs;

(3) commends the Government for its funding of $4.9 billion for projects nation-wide to deliver works such as road sealing, flood immunity, strengthening and widening, pavement rehabilitation, bridge and culvert upgrades and road realignments; and

(4) acknowledges that the ROSI initiative is providing substantial social and economic benefits, including opportunities for greater regional employment and business growth.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded? It can be seconded after you speak.

Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The $4.9 billion Roads of Strategic Importance initiative is improving connections for mining and agricultural regions to ports, airports and other hubs right across Australia. That's fantastic for my entirely regional electorate of O'Connor, whose mining and agricultural areas are directly benefiting from $224 million of that funding. In O'Connor, ROSI will improve essential freight roads in the productive Goldfields and Wheatbelt regions of Western Australia. Under ROSI, three key projects are being funded in my electorate. Firstly, there's the $52 million Coolgardie to Esperance Highway upgrade between Widgiemooltha and Kambalda. ROSI is contributing $41.6 million to this important freight route in the shire of Coolgardie. The project started in February and is due for completion in mid-2022. The second project is a $40.5 million upgrade to the Great Eastern Highway will greatly improve freight transport between the Goldfields and the Port of Fremantle. That project will start very soon. It will include significant works in the shires of Westonia and Yilgarn.

Following the recent Western Australia electoral redistribution, these two shires will come into O'Connor from the adjacent electorate of Durack, so ably represented by my good friend Melissa Price. Construction on this Great Eastern Highway upgrade is expected to be completed in early 2023, and the $32.4 million of this project cost will come from ROSI. With Western Australia accounting for almost 70 per cent of the nation's gold production, both of these projects are important for the nation's economic development. But it is the third and largest project funded in my electorate under ROSI that I wish to focus on today.

The $187.5 million Wheatbelt secondary freight network is a once-in-a-generation fillip for a region that has 4,200 mostly family-run farms. Western Australia regularly produces one-third of Australia's wheat and more than 40 per cent of its wheat exports. This year we are on target for a record 20.5 million tonnes. That's two million tons more than we ever produced previously, or an increase of about 10 per cent on the previous record. It is no surprise of course that that production comes out of the Wheatbelt. The region also produces much of Western Australia's 21 per cent contribution to the national wool clip. Almost all of the clip is transported interstate or is exported. You can see then why efficient freight to port and ROSI's $150 million contribution to the project is a huge deal for the region.

I am pleased to report that 42 local governments are collaborating on the 4,400 kilometre Wheatbelt secondary freight network. The project technical director, Garrick Yandle, CEO of the shire of Kulin, tells me that the 42 LGAs have agreed on seven priority routes to progress first up. Along those routes, 10 road projects have commenced, with two already complete. This is in the first year of the project's operation.

I am incredibly enthused about this project because, under the redistribution, my electorate—if I'm fortunate enough to be re-elected—will pick up an additional 16 of these Wheatbelt shires, and that's in addition to the 14 Wheatbelt shires that are already in O'Connor. In the Wheatbelt areas new to my electorate, the $2.2 million Merredin-Narembeen Road upgrade is one of those two projects already completed. Also in new areas of O'Connor will be the $1.3 million Kondinin to Quairading upgrade, which is nearing completion; the $1.4 million improvement to the Goomalling-Meckering Road, which is three-quarters complete; and the $1.6 million upgrade to the Merredin-Narembeen which is well underway. These projects aim to improve access from Wheatbelt ports to the ports of Albany, Kwinana, Fremantle, Geraldton and Bunbury. Elsewhere, in existing areas of O'Connor, shires have priority-one projects, including Corrigin, Cuballing, Dumbleyung, Kondinin, Kulin and Wickepin.

In the shires yet to come across to my electorate, Kondinin, Merredin, Narembeen and Quairading will all directly benefit. That is just from the first $18 million tranche of projects in the overall $187 million Wheatbelt secondary freight network. In shires that will receive funding, Garrick Yandle tells me, the average project cost is between $1.5 million and $2 million, which is three to four times the magnitude of projects that Wheatbelt LGAs would typically deliver. Mr Yandle says the secondary freight network is one of the biggest infrastructure projects the region has ever seen. The roads are essential for supporting key freight supply chains. They also support tourism in the region. I congratulate all 42 participating Wheatbelt shires for their leadership and collaboration in delivering this game-changing project. I commend the Morrison government for its outstanding strategic commitment to this nation-building ROSI initiative.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Fiona Phillips (Gilmore, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to speak on this private members' business today, because in my electorate of Gilmore, we have many roads of strategic importance.

Before coming to this place, I fought hard to get federal funding for the new Nowra Bridge. The 140-year-old iron-truss bridge was reaching the end of its operational life. Put simply, it had to replaced, otherwise locals would have fewer lanes going directly in and out of Nowra. With$155 million in funding from the federal government and $155 million from the New South Wales state government, which is great news, I'm pleased to say that the new Nowra Bridge is progressing well and expected to be completed by mid-2024. But during this time I've heard the very loud cries from people about the need for a Nowra bypass and that the new Nowra Bridge was not going to solve all our massive traffic issues. At the Nowra Bridge sod-turning on 19 June 2020, I also said that we have to get on with the Nowra bypass.

Quite honestly, I'm gobsmacked nothing has happened on the Nowra bypass. The plans have been there for decades. We have a New South Wales state government that has been in power since 2011: 10 years of state coalition government and not one bo-beep about the Nowra bypass; three New South Wales Liberal MPs in my electorate of Gilmore and again, no willingness or drive for a Nowra bypass. None. We've heard a lot about bypasses in other areas. Look to the south: we have both the Milton-Ulladulla bypass and the Moruya bypass going ahead, albeit with a distinct lack of genuine consultation with the communities involved. But Nowra, the largest town in the City of Shoalhaven, has no bypass. The Shoalhaven, the gateway to Jervis Bay and the pristine New South Wales South Coast, is a magnet for visitors. When lockdown ended, people were fleeing Sydney and Canberra for the coast—and who would blame them? It's such a beautiful area. Our population more than quadruples at Christmas and holiday times.

More and more people are choosing to relocate to the New South Wales South Coast and work from home, but our infrastructure just doesn't cut it. Ask anyone living in Bomaderry or further north who needs to travel to Nowra for work—it's a nightmare, and that's on the good days. Friday afternoon commonly sees gridlock around our internal Nowra CBD streets, as people try their best to dodge the traffic without any luck.

Our local small businesses, their workers and families have done it tough. Drought, bushfires, floods, ongoing bushfire recovery and COVID-19 have created the perfect horrific storm. Our local businesses just need a break. Parking in the Nowra CBD is a nightmare and an ongoing issue, and the amenity of the town is not helped by the gridlock of our Nowra Bridge crossing and our streets.

I love Nowra. I'm proud of Nowra. It's where I've grown up, it's where I was married 25 years ago and it's where I've raised my four children. But there is so much more that could be done to help improve the liveability and workability of the town. The revitalisation of the Nowra Riverfront is something that I have long been passionate about. The new Nowra Bridge is a great start, but unless the government looks to the future and gets on with the preplanning for the Nowra bypass it will be another 30 years. Don't we owe it to our children, their children and everyone in the Nowra-Bomaderry area, and along the New South Wales South Coast, to ensure that people have safe passage through and into Nowra—that the town of Nowra can flourish, helping businesses, workers and jobs?

How can people help? By signing the petition on my website calling on the state and federal government to get on with the Nowra bypass and start the preplanning. Together, let's get it done.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was great to hear the member for Gilmore acknowledging the delivery by the Liberals and the Nationals in government. I certainly know that when I took over as Deputy Prime Minister and minister for infrastructure, amongst other things in that financial year there was a $50 billion infrastructure rollout. When I left in June there was $110 billion, because I knew that we needed the infrastructure rollout right across the nation to revitalise the nation, to give it that impetus, particularly through the bushfires—and I acknowledge that the member for Eden-Monaro has just joined us in the chamber—through COVID-19 and through everything else that has beset this nation in recent years. The infrastructure program supports 100,000 workers, whether it is in projects like Adelaide River to Wadeye, Alice Springs to Darwin, Alice Spring to Halls Creek, Cairns to Northern Territory border, Cooktown to Weipa, Karratha to Tom Price, Mount Isa to Rockhampton, Newman to Katherine, Northern Territory gas industry road upgrades, Tennant Creek to Townsville or Townsville to Roma.

There are also infrastructure programs in southern Australia: Ballarat to Ouyen, Barton Highway, Cockburn to Burrup, Echuca to Robinvale, Great Northern Highway, Bindoon Bypass, Green Triangle, Hobart to Sorell, Melbourne to Mildura, Port Augusta to Perth, Renmark to Gawler—we're getting to South Australia now, member for Grey—Stawell to the South Australian border, the Tasmanian roads package with its many projects. In New South Wales we have Tenterfield to Newcastle. In Queensland we have Toowoomba to Ipswich and Toowoomba to Seymour, taking in the Newell Highway. We have the Wheatbelt Secondary Freight Network, which the member for O'Connor mentioned. There are so many Roads of Strategic Importance initiatives—so many. I know that this can only happen when the Liberals and Nationals are in government.

Last week I spoke about a Brisbane based ALP federal member bemoaning the fact that we were putting bitumen on unsealed roads. Unfortunately, this is an example of what we hear from those opposite, particularly those opposite in metropolitan seats who don't understand the vast road networks in regional, rural and most specifically remote Australia. But they also don't understand that those local government areas, those regions, punch well above their weight when it comes to economic output, particularly in beef and grain production. They produce so much and they deserve a good road network—they deserve the best road network. They deserve that connectivity, they deserve those safety aspect that only programs like the ROSI can implement, and that is why it has become such an important part of the overall national infrastructure rollout in this nation in recent years. I'm proud of the ROSI and what it's been able to do. I'm also proud of those people who've been able to increase their productivity as a result of the ROSI.

I spoke to a fellow in a remote Western Australian mining company who told me that just by putting bitumen on part of the Outback Way—and the object is to get the entire Outback Way completely sealed—70 kilometre or so, was going to boost his company's productivity by hours upon hours upon hours, because they wouldn't have to go over those corrugated unsealed sections at very low speed while trying not to tip the heavy excavation equipment and mining gear off the back of the truck. They have to drive carefully on those roads, and that's just one small example of the huge benefit of ROSI and other programs, which are only put in place by the Liberals and Nationals. The ROSI has brought benefits to this country and its the regions, particularly those in remote Australia. No-one understands regional Australia quite like this bloke over here, the member for Grey, and he'll tell you. He'll extol the virtues of not just ROSI but all the road programs that we have put in place for those farmers, for those miners, for those people who choose to live in regional Australia. Why shouldn't they have roads in remote Australia that are just as good as the roads we have in Kingston or Barton or anywhere else in the Australian capital? I see members nodding and I thank them—and someone is even ringing me to tell me what a great speech this is. ROSI is so important, and everybody in this chamber agrees. We will not only have this program in place for years to come but invest more in it in the future.

Kristy McBain (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you to the member for Riverina for his ringing endorsement of regional areas! It's great to stand here today to talk about the Roads of Strategic Importance initiative, because the premise of this initiative is so important to regional communities right across Australia. This initiative is a vital way to ensure that regional communities are connected and to make sure that key freight and transport routes are maintained and improved, where needed. The safety of highways and important transport routes is something that's raised with me in my travels across Eden-Monaro. Everywhere I go I meet with people who are concerned about the state of our roads—and not just the roads in their neighbourhoods or their main towns; they're concerned about the state and safety of the key highways and transport routes that intersect our region.

Time and again I'm asked whether there's federal funding available to fix or improve Eden-Monaro highways. Every time I provide the same answer, 'Yes, there can be one-off funding available but ongoing funding is only available if the road is identified as a road of strategic importance.' This government has identified a number of roads across the country which they deem to be of great importance to our nation. They've attracted $4.9 billion for projects nationwide to deliver work such as road sealing; flood immunity; strengthening and widening; pavement rehabilitation; bridge and culvert upgrades; and road realignments. Following the bushfires, two bridges in the Bega Valley will be restored, thanks to the funding of this initiative: the Murrabrine Bridge in Cobargo and the Whipstick Bridge in Wyndham will both be upgraded. These existing timber bridges will be replaced with new two-lane concrete structures. The benefits of these projects are expected to include improved freight and load limits for the bridges; improved accessibility of freight to transport for local producers; and increased productivity. These are three really significant benefits from two comparatively minor projects.

Unfortunately, key transport routes for timber, livestock and produce, and the increasingly busy tourist drives on highways across Eden-Monaro, are not included in the list of Roads of Strategic Importance to receive regular federal funding. Only one road in the entire Eden-Monaro electorate, an electorate that is the size of Switzerland and covers more than 40,000 square kilometres, is considered a road of strategic importance. That means only one road in the entire region that completely surrounds Canberra, and which goes down to the coast and stretches to the Victorian border, receives that funding, and that is the Barton Highway.

When people ask me why Barton Highway is the only road to receive regular funding, and why the Monaro Highway, the Kings Highway, the Snowy Mountains Highway and the Princes Highway aren't on the list, I can't answer. There's no visibility as to why some roads are chosen and others haven't been, and this is a point of frustration for some communities. The Princes Highway stretches from Melbourne to Sydney, with dozens of towns along the way. It's the coastal highway between Australia's two largest cities, and yet the vast majority of it is not considered to be a road of strategic importance. The Kings Highway connects the nation's capital to the coast, and it's a road that's used more and more every year as the population in the Canberra region grows, but it's not a road of strategic importance.

During the Eden-Monaro by-election last year, the Prime Minister travelled to my electorate and stood with his high-vis and hard hat on to announce that Snowy Hydro 2.0 would go ahead. He was quoted as saying that the scheme would help Australia to grow its way out of the economic challenges of the pandemic. Over the life of the scheme, Snowy 2.0 is expected to create 4,000 direct jobs. It's a nation-building renewable energy project that will benefit many generations to come, and we never begrudge jobs or investment in these communities. It seems to me that the Snowy 2.0 project is a pretty significant project for the country and that, as such, the Snowy-Monaro and Snowy Valleys regions should have had roads of strategic importance declared. This scheme has resulted in more cars, more trucks and more heavy vehicles on Snowy roads.

The Monaro Highway and the Snowy Mountains Highway are just two of the highways which are seeing an increase in heavy-vehicle traffic. More traffic and more extreme weather events, including the recent floods in my region, mean that these roads are quite literally taking a beating. A project that's of national significance should attract federal funding to help with the infrastructure requirements around it. This means that some of the roads in Eden-Monaro, particularly in the Snowy region, should be eligible to receive funding under the roads initiative. When I meet with communities and they ask these questions I tell them I will follow them up. So today I'm putting questions to the government about the Roads of Strategic Importance initiative. How are the roads selected to receive this regular funding? When was the last time a review into this scheme took place? How can new roads be added to the list of roads that receive regular funding under this scheme? I look forward to getting the answers on behalf of the people of the mighty Eden-Monaro.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, you, like other members of this place, would sometimes have people make complaints to your office about various things, whether it's about being vaccinated or about not being vaccinated or about 100 other topics, but I'd have to say that, in the last four years, my office has had quite an uptick of complaints from people about having to go slow on our roads because they're being rebuilt. I've never had a better complaint, I must say! I'm very pleased that so much is happening on our roads. You've got to really work to get around Grey and avoid the roadworks at the moment. Roads of Strategic Importance is just one of the programs that are delivering for us. In particular, there is $62 million allotted to the construction, or reconstruction, of the Barrier Highway between Burra and the border, essentially. For those who don't know, the Barrier Highway is South Australia's direct connection to Sydney, so there is a lot of heavy traffic that comes down that line. Then there is $100 million allocated west of Port Augusta—$75 million for the Eyre Highway, heading through to WA, and another $25 million on Eyre Peninsula, for assistance in replacing the rail network that was closed two or three years ago now. Around $15 million of that has been drawn down on. All of these numbers I quote are matched, I hasten to add, by 20 per cent from the state government, so the figures are actually bigger than they might initially appear. On the Eyre Highway, we have seen hundreds of kilometres of widening go ahead. At one stage, driving between my home place and Port Augusta, I think I had around 120 kilometres of speed restrictions. But the speed restrictions are off now, and the road is in fantastic order.

But, as I said, there's so much more happening. We've got a $100 million commitment from the federal government for what we call the Port Wakefield solution, which is an overpass and dual lanes through Port Wakefield—this is on the Augusta Highway—and $160 million for the construction of a new bridge, a second bridge, in Port Augusta. Works on those are well underway, and it's very exciting for me to drive past those works. We've begun work on duplicating the highway north of Port Wakefield, heading towards Port Augusta. The first section will be to Nantawarra. There has also been a lot of work done on the Horrocks Highway, and there is more to come. The Todd Highway, on Eyre Peninsula, which is one of the major grain routes, has been widened. There are significant numbers of passing lanes going in around the electorate, and the councils have not been missing out either. In Grey alone, there has been $9.4 million extra coming, through the ramped-up Roads to Recovery, to councils in Grey and another $23 million coming through the local roads component of the FAGs. The Supplementary Local Road Funding program, a South Australia-specific program, delivers $20 million a year to regional councils across the state. In the last 18 months, $68 million has gone to councils in Grey from the three rounds of the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program. No wonder things are happening on our roads.

In so many areas in regional Australia we rely on transport routes. Our farmers and miners need a best path to port, if you like, the most competitive way of getting our products onto the world stage. And there is the safety issue. While the road toll is not what it was 10 or even 20 years ago, we are moving in the right direction all the time. Some of that is on the back of better cars and better safety in cars, but certainly a lot of it is on the increasing level of road safety provided by a good road. The road transport people are very keen to point out to us that the best value for our buck we can get is through road widening, the extending of the shoulders out so that, if someone dips a wheel off, they can get back while they're still on the bitumen rather than dipping that one wheel off and—we've all seen the tracks, that curving line that comes from the left-hand side of the road and ends up with the car backwards on the other side of the road. I do around 80,000 or 90,000 kilometres in a year, and over the last 14 years I've had a couple of close encounters that I would have preferred not to have had, and they weren't through my driving mistakes. There is always a chance out there that there is an accident waiting to happen. We will never get to a stage where there will be no accidents. Let's not kid ourselves. Driver error is alive. But we need to do all we possibly can to make sure that the road surfaces are not contributing to that outcome. I think we've made great ground. I'm very pleased to be part of a government has a $110 billion commitment in this area. We have never seen works on this scale before, certainly not in my electorate of Grey.

Sitting suspended from 13:24 to 16:00