Zoe McKenzie (Flinders, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Recently I met with a number of constituents who know all too well the dangers along the Nepean Highway near Mount Martha in the northern part of Flinders. I recently joined David, who lives near Forest Drive, and we took a long walk together, actually over a couple of hours, down to Mount Martha Primary School. We discussed a variety of topics, including road safety.

David is a paramedic. He knows better than most, and perhaps more than he would like to, the impact of road trauma. He has a wise and curious mind and an informed passion for road laws, road design, traffic management, and motorist, motorbike, pushbike and pedestrian safety. One of his questions was about Forest Drive and its intersection with the Nepean Highway. We spoke about the risks associated with the intersection and how these risks increase during busier times like school pick-up and school drop-off, or the anxiety inducing chaos during the peak summer period, when many unfamiliar drivers, indeed learner drivers, explore the glorious Mornington Peninsula.

I also met with Andrew, who lives on Uralla Road. He came into the office with a history of dangerous events just down the road from his house. Andrew is often the first on site when there is an accident—a task he never asked for and one that none of us would ever envy. Andrew hears the screeching tyres. He hears the crunching sound of metal, breaking glass and then, eventually, the whirr overhead of the helicopters coming to collect people who've been in an accident. He has a collection of photographs of the regular aftermath at Uralla Road, and it is a shocking and frustrating set of images—shocking because of the severity of the crashes but also the frequency of them, and frustrating because, for more than a decade, residents have been pleading to have both intersections addressed.

The former coalition government acted when the state Labor government, after much pleading from local residents, would not. In 2016 the coalition committed $200,000 for interim safety measures at Forest Drive. In 2019 the coalition committed $10 million for the upgrade of Forest Drive and Uralla Road. This was later doubled to $20 million for both upgrades. In March 2022, after almost three years of federal funding being available, the intersections were given the green light by the state Labor government, with a commencement date of early 2023. It was 18 months behind the previous schedules but at least there was hope something would be done. Now these two projects are delayed again and at risk of losing all their funding through this Labor government's infrastructure review.

In 2015 Bruce Bone, aged 86, was killed in a car crash at the Forest Drive intersection. His daughter Jan told a local news report at the time:

Our family has never really recovered from Dad's death, and to find out that the funding that we and other locals fought so hard for might be pulled is gut-wrenching.

Every single day the Albanese government refuse to confirm funding for these intersections, they put more lives at risk and future accidents will sit at their feet.