Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Ian Campbell, the Minister representing the Minister for Transport and Regional Services. Will the minister please advise the Senate of how Australia’s strong economy is allowing the coalition government to build transport infrastructure throughout the nation and particularly in New South Wales? Further, will he also advise whether other levels of government are fulfilling their responsibilities?

Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question from Senator Payne, a Liberal senator from New South Wales, is an incredibly important one, not only for the people of New South Wales but indeed for people right across Australia. Not only does the road and rail network transport goods and services around this country; it is also the place where families—around the week but certainly on weekends—get into their cars and move around the coast, go to their holiday destinations or go and visit family. It is incredibly important that we have reliable, modern, high-quality roads linking our capital cities and—Mr President, as you would know better than most—also that we fund local roads through the Roads to Recovery program, a program that was described by the Labor Party as a rort and a boondoggle, I think it was, and a program that would be under threat from the election of a Labor government.

In New South Wales in particular, as a very important part of Australia with a very large road network, there has been a massive increase in spending. Across Australia we are investing a further $15 billion under the current five-year AusLink program. Five billion dollars of it will be spent in New South Wales. There has been an expansion of the size of the national network. We are putting substantially more money into the Pacific Highway and substantially more money into the main link between Sydney and Melbourne, the Hume Highway—a massive increase and an increase of $3 billion on the national network alone, which is a 171 per cent increase in this five-year period over the last five-year period. That it is a phenomenal investment in road infrastructure. And there are investments in the rail infrastructure to try to get more transport off the roads and onto rail. As anyone who has driven up the Pacific Highway knows, there is an enormous load of heavy truck transport going up the Pacific Highway and the New England Highway, and we really desperately want to see some of that load taken by rail.

There was, as Senator Payne probably knows, a call yesterday by the NRMA for the Australian government to add the Princes Highway to the national network. The Princes Highway is a state road. It is the responsibility of the Iemma government. It is the responsibility of the New South Wales state Labor government. It is a road that they have ignored for years and years. It is a road that needs investment. Thanks to the hard work of local members along there, the federal government has invested money—and it has had to due to the total neglect of the New South Wales Labor government—into the Pambula Bridge, which Senator Payne would know of; into some black spots between Nowra and Jervis Bay, where we have spent about $15 million; into the Conjola deviation, with $10 million; and into the North Kiama bypass, a road that I visited when I was the Minister for Local Government, Territories and Roads, with $34 million.

If we want to see the Princes Highway made safe, the best thing the NRMA can do is say to the state government: ‘The federal government have increased your funding by 171 per cent. The state government have got to be responsible for something in roads.’ We have expanded the network federally; the state government have got to be held to account and held responsible. I call on the state government of New South Wales, with the support of the NRMA, to increase their road funding to make the roads safer for New South Welshmen and to make the transport network around the great state of New South Wales safer and more secure.