New South Wales: Roads

Mr GEE (Calare) (09:08): I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Member from Calare moving the following motion—That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) all the major parties have let the residents and communities of Central Western New South Wales down with broken promises, empty announcements and funding cuts with respect to the Bells Line of Road and Great Western Highway;

(b) the people of the Central West see expressways and tunnels being built all over Sydney, the north coast and south coast, yet are told to make do with a bridge built by a convict chain gang in 1832 as their main access road in and out of Sydney; and

(c) the indefinite closure of the Great Western Highway demonstrates that the people of the Central West are being short-changed and ripped off when it comes to the funding of a decent access road to Sydney; and

(2) calls on:

(a) the Australian and New South Wales governments to introduce a support package for businesses in the Central West being devastated by the indefinite closure of the Great Western Highway; and

(b) the Australian Government to commit significant and substantial funding in the upcoming budget for improved road access between the Central West and Sydney

Today is April Fools' Day, and the current state of the Great Western Highway is an appalling joke. The people of the Central West are done playing the fool for governments that have been neglecting our region for decades. Our region isn't facing just one disaster and emergency. We are being choked by a dual failure of infrastructure and essential fuel supply. I speak of the indefinite closure of the Great Western Highway because a bridge built by a convict chain gang in 1832 has, unsurprisingly, failed. You cannot make this up. The urgency of this matter was clearly brought home only two days ago when a single-vehicle crash on Chifley Road proved how precarious our situation is. When one vehicle can shut down the only remaining route between the Central West and Sydney, the system hasn't just failed; it has collapsed. There was no access in and out of the Central West at all.

We now have an extra 12,000 vehicles a day being forced onto a detour that was never designed for this volume. Our local roads are being pounded into the dust. Little Hartley, which used to be a bustling tourism and trade corridor, is now a ghost town. I've stood on the ground with local business owners—people like Margaret and Alan Jackson from Maple Springs Nursery. They've had their income cut to one-tenth of what it was. Shannon Kus, a father of six and owner of Erin's Quality Outdoor Power Centre, has a 20-minute commute which has blown out to 70 minutes. His customer numbers are at zero and he has warned that, without government assistance, his business—his family's livelihood—will fold.

Ian Fitzgerald operates ICF Haulage, running trucks from Hartley to Sydney multiple times a day. He employs 14 permanent staff members. This is what he has told me:

To send our trucks around through Lithgow, Chifley Road and the Darling Causeway adds around two hours per trip. Add to this the current fuel price, and we are going broke. We will be laying off staff within the next week or so unless we can get some sort of support.

For transport operators, including Ian and others like Ken Muldoon from Mully's Transport, it's twice the cost for twice the time for half the profit. That's what they have told me. The pain is being felt across many sectors, from hospitality and tourism providers to retail and transport.

For the Central West, Easter and the autumn period is peak season for tourism. You don't get these months back. Once a small business closes its doors, it often stays closed. But what really gets us, what really infuriates us, is that we see billions being poured into gold-plated tunnels under Sydney and world-class expressways to the north and south coasts. Yet our region is treated as an afterthought. We've just seen $2 billion dropped on the expressway to the new Sydney airport. We see announcements about high-speed rail to the Hunter, which will cost about $93 billion. But all we get out west is cheap words and small change and a patched-up convict bridge built in 1832. It is disgusting. The people of our region are disgusted. Words cannot convey the depth of anger and disgust that our residents feel over this issue.

We produce the food that feeds the cities and we do the mining that underpins the economy. If our farmers can't sow because of fuel shortages and our businesses can't move goods because of a crumbling antique bridge then the whole nation will suffer. We need direct financial relief—emergency assistance for those businesses smashed by the highway closure. This is not a handout. It's a survival kit for a crisis that government neglect has created. We are done with the white papers and the planning studies. We need a genuine commitment in the upcoming budget for a long-term solution that doesn't depend on convict engineering from 1832.

This must be designated a national infrastructure priority as a matter of urgency. You cannot fix a major artery with a bandaid. You need a permanent high-speed connection to Sydney. The most terrifying word for our business owners right now is 'indefinite'. They need certainty—not forever roadworks. They need real financial support, and they need it now. I'm calling on the government to stop treating the people of the Central West like second-class citizens and deliver on these two demands. One, we need an immediate business support package that will provide direct financial relief for the local families and business owners who are being smashed by this highway closure. Governments created this disaster and they now have to step in and clean it up and fix it. Two, we need the federal government to commit significant and substantial funding in the upcoming budget for improved access between the Central West and Sydney. Surely it's not too much to ask. The government know what the issues are. They really do.

When the Prime Minister was the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, in 2010 he put out a press release which said that a corridor for sections—including 'a tunnel as part of a bypass of the township of Mount Victoria and Victoria Pass'—'will be preserved so work on them could proceed when additional funding becomes available'. Here's the release. That's what he said. He was talking about a tunnel in 2010 and saying that a corridor had been preserved for one. Plans and announcements have been going on for decades. The National Party turned the first sod on the Bells Line of Road expressway in 2007. It never happened. Then we had the tunnel, which the Perrottet government refused to commit any funding for and which, in June 2022, they effectively mothballed and walked away from because they said it wasn't a priority. Where was the National Party then? The tunnel was then totally killed off by the Minns government. And then you had the current federal government making off with $2 billion in federal funding that had been committed to the highway. It was an epic funding snatch and grab, so there is plenty of blame to go around.

In question time last week, the Prime Minister said:

The truth is that all governments, state and federal, probably should have done something about this …

He's right. The Prime Minister is right—they should have. But, with state and federal government failures having caused this, those governments now need to proactively get in there and help with a support package and a longer term solution. I'm sorry, but you cannot keep kicking this can down the road any longer, because the road can't handle it anymore. It's time for the government to actually have our backs and invest in a 21st-century solution we all deserve. We've had a gutful of the empty words and the empty promises. Action is needed, and I call on this government to step up and lead.