Gordon Reid (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to draw attention to an important issue in my electorate of Robertson on the Central Coast. Over the past several weeks, residents in the suburbs of Hardys Bay, Killcare, Killcare Heights, Pretty Beach, Bensville and Empire Bay have been emailing me and contacting my office about the unsafe conditions at the Wards Hill Road and Empire Bay Drive intersection.

Residents have said that this intersection is not managing with the level of traffic that passes through it, especially during peak periods of the day. Consequently, this situation is creating unsafe driving conditions for many people and causing anguish for residents. I have heard and read reports from residents who have been directly involved in car accidents and the long-term effect that this is having on their lives and on their families. Residents have also shared stories of their near collisions that have occurred because of the difficult and confusing design of the intersection. This intersection simply has become too dangerous for many residents to use.

After reviewing the correspondence I had received, I decided to meet with the concerned residents on site. We met during a peak period of the day so that I could see firsthand the scale of the issue, and what I saw confirmed what residents had been telling me. The intersection is not managing current traffic levels, and this is causing unsafe conditions for drivers.

Following on from this meeting, I have written directly to the New South Wales Minister for Regional Transport and Roads, Jenny Aitchison, and the Central Coast Council administrator, Mr Rik Hart. Residents may not be aware that both of these roads actually come under the responsibility of different levels of government: Empire Bay Drive is the responsibility of the New South Wales government and Wards Hill Road the responsibility of the Central Coast council. I am here in this capacity to bring both of these levels of government together to find a long-term solution to this issue, because that is what is required at this dangerous intersection.

As your member for Robertson, I will also advocate at the federal level to support improving this piece of infrastructure. I will continue to keep the community up to date on the responses from the Central Coast Council and the New South Wales government. Already, the federal Albanese Labor government has contributed $40 million to address local road repairs and renewals across the Central Coast. I will continue to be a strong advocate for further federal government funding assistance for local road projects in our region.

I'm pleased, as well, that there has been strong community support for action to date. My online petition has been signed by close to 400 people from not only the immediate surrounding communities but right across the Central Coast region. The Wards Hill Road and Empire Bay Drive intersection handles traffic from residents from the south, including from the peninsula—areas like Umina, Ettalong and Woy Woy—and residents from the north, including Erina, Terrigal and those central suburbs in Kincumber. The importance of this intersection cannot be understated. It highlights the need for urgent action and an urgent solution to this matter.

I wish to thank the concerned members of the community who have already signed my petition, and I encourage others to complete the petition by visiting my website. Together, if enough people get behind this issue, we can achieve a long-term, positive solution for this intersection and for the thousands of Central Coast residents and Central Coast commuters that use this part of our road network.

I want to give a special shout-out to some community advocates that have been emailing and calling both me personally and the office and have been advocating for quite some time for action on this issue. In particular, I'd like to highlight the efforts of Bill Young, Helen Matthews, Jane Leivesley, Samantha Goode and Treveen Brown. These residents on the Central Coast have been absolutely outstanding in their advocacy for local issues, but in particular they've been outstanding in their advocacy to improve the road network right across the Central Coast, including this most dangerous intersection. This must be addressed, and I'm here to bring all levels of government and stakeholders together to find a solution.

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm here to give the House an update on the natural disaster that hit my community last year, because there's still a lot of work to do. I am concerned about one of the programs, which is running out, and I think we may need to be flexible with how we deliver it.

To remind you, Speaker, and the House, we had a flooding natural disaster in my region on 28 February last year. To give you the context of how big that was, the previous biggest flood by a Lismore standard was about 12.2 metres. We as a community could manage a flood around 12.2 metres. Houses were built to cope with that. The business community knew where to lift. Car yards knew where to move cars. The whole thing would be planned, and everyone would move to do their flood planning. People went to bed on the Sunday night thinking the flood was going to be 11½ metres. Everyone had actioned their flood plan. Then, at one o'clock in the morning, the flood was revised to be 14½ metres, 2½ metres bigger than we had ever seen and three metres bigger than what was predicted the day before. That caused absolute carnage. We remember obviously that, in the initial hours this was happening, the 'tinnie army' got out. This was neighbours going out in tinnies and kayaks and jet skis, saving their neighbour's and family's lives. Tragically, only four people died that day, but it was a miracle there weren't more.

From that crisis in the sense of saving lives, people initially moved to evacuation centres. For three or four days, we were basically on our own. No-one could get in, given the road flooding. We had ADF aerial support on the first day, which helped save lies, but, really, we were there for about four days on our own. Food and petrol shortages were starting because quite large communities were isolated. We got through that with a lot of community resilience and a lot of community heroes. The ADF then arrived on the Thursday and people started to come in to help us clean up and start the recovery effort.

With all due respect, there has been a lot of good work done by government, by the previous government and by the new government, which has continued a lot of grants programs. There have been a lot of grants programs rolled out, a lot of new programs, to help businesses and people to get back on their feet.

There are two things I want to touch on. Some of the insurance companies have done reasonably well, but some of them have made really silly decisions. If your house gets flooded, you're first meant to rip out any gyprock or anything else where mould can grow. Insurance companies, in lots of cases, would not let people go into their houses and do that initial clean-up because they had to assess it properly first. That meant that in some cases it was six months before people were allowed to go and start the clean-up of their house. What happened over that six-month period? Mould got out of control and has become a huge issue. It has made the job bigger and more expensive.

Both the federal and the state government have announced what we're calling the resilient home program. What do we do to keep people safe? We have people who live on a floodplain. There were probably 5,000 houses that were impacted at some level. But those houses impacted where we think something has to happen because they're not safe where they live, we're talking probably 800 to 1,000 homes.

There are two strategies we have to use here. The first strategy they've looked at is a buyback program. This buyback program has been run far too slowly. People don't know if they qualify' they don't know what they are going to get offered. This is now a year on. So people have gone, 'Well, I can't camp in my house or live in a caravan for a year or two years or three years.' So either they've sold their house, which means the new house doesn't qualify for the program, or they've started to put their own money into their house so that they can go back and live with some dignity. I think that means that the take-up of the buyback will not be what government is forecasting. The Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation is assuming 70 to 80 per cent take-up of this, which means the majority of people will have moved off particular areas of the floodplain they think are most dangerous and, therefore, that has solved the human safety issue.

My fear is that—talking to people on the ground anecdotally—that take-up will be closer to 50 per cent. The government's going to spend $700 million or $800 million on this. If we only move 50 per cent of people, it really hasn't achieved anything, because three, five, seven, and nine may have left, but two, four, six, and eight are still there. That doesn't achieve what we need to achieve, which highlights a necessity. When the CSIRO next year hands down its hydrology report, with its flood mitigation strategies, which it thinks can do things through engineering solutions and take up two metres off a flood, that mitigation study and that hydrology report has to be adhered to.