David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As we pass through the last sitting week of parliament for this year, I thought it was appropriate that I bring to the attention of the House some of the local achievements in the Lyne electorate. As we have often heard, this government is getting ahead and building the roads of the 21st century. Nowhere is it more evident that in the Lyne electorate.

Our government's decision to reverse Labor's funding cuts on the Pacific Highway and restore the 80-20 funding split with the New South Wales government will mean over $2 billion extra into this project. This important piece of national infrastructure will be transformed into a four-lane divided highway—hopefully by the end of the decade—all the way to the Queensland border.

There are two major sections in my electorate which have had their work commenced. The first is the $820 million Oxley Highway to Kundabung upgrade, which is one of the very important missing links in the upgrade. This project will see 37 kilometres of motorway north of Port Macquarie, which will result in two new bridges—across the Hastings, and also further north across Maria River. This 37 kilometres of motorway will mean 933 more construction jobs at its peak over the next three years, and nearly 3,000 indirect jobs throughout the region.

The other road project in my electorate is the second part, the Kundabung to Kempsey upgrade, which I had the pleasure of attending with Andrew Stoner, the state member for Oxley. It is a 14-kilometre section of the Pacific Highway upgrade, which will bring the dual highway upgrade into an existing part from north Kempsey, and as a result this project will generate about 167 construction jobs.

We are also investing in other important transport linkages along the mid-North coast which includes the $17 million upgrade of the Buckets Way between Taree and Gloucester. We are also investing over $10 million in the Greater Taree Roads and Bridges Package, which will fix a number of important bridges which are essential for trade and commerce and for the daily commute for workers around Dyers Crossing. People in the dairy, timber and beef industries rely on these bridges, and I am sure the council will put the money to good use.

Also over the current term of this parliament Greater Taree City Council, Port Macquarie-Hastings Council, Gloucester Shire Council and Kempsey Shire Council are getting an investment from the Commonwealth of around $100 million towards local council services and infrastructures, through federal financial assistance grants. This program and the $15 million in extra Roads To Recovery funding through the coalition's investment will mean that there are safer roads. And there is certainly a back log of roads that need attention in my electorate.

The NBN was given much fanfare and expectations about it have been built up quite unbelievably by the previous government, but it has taken a change of government and the work of our Communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, to unravel some of the construction delays, the messes, and the absence of a rational business plan. A technology mix and a commitment to more solid business practices, like actually getting paying customers to contribute to the cost of it, means that there has been an increase in connections. Many of these have occurred in the electorate of Lyne—including fixed wireless towers around Gloucester, Taree, Wingham, and in the Manning, Camden Haven and Hastings regions. Fixed wireless towers are planned for Beechwood and Wauchope around New Year.

With the previous roll-out where we had fibre to the premises in suburbs of Taree, there was an obvious deficiency in the planning. It defied logic but they were rolling out fibre to the premises in the suburbs of Taree but not in the central business district. As a result of lobbying the minister and NBN Co—and after an application of good common sense—they have decided to roll it out in the Taree CBD, which I commend.

While they have the infrastructure there, they will continue it into Cundletown and out to Wingham and other areas.

We have Green Army and Work for the Dole projects that have been announced in the Lyne electorate. Two project teams have been appointed under the Green Army scheme—one for the Manning and one for the Hastings—and a number of other local environmental rehabilitation projects earmarked for improvements. The Work for the Dole program is being expanded and will not only deliver more skills, training and confidence to young local job seekers, but assist in delivering important community projects like the beach-to-beach and school-to-school projects in Camden Haven.

I would like to talk about the beach-to-beach program. This community initiative has been designed, engineered, planned and presented to the department by a conglomerate of active individuals, including engineers, architects, concreters and construction workers. Not only have they got this project to the stage on paper that the department thought it was one of the best projects they have seen across the nation, but they have actually started with volunteer work. I recently had the Assistant Minister for Employment, Luke Hartsuyker, in to have a look at this and he was similarly impressed. I would like to bring to the attention of this chamber the great work of this community committee.

Another committee is working on a similar bike path in Camden Haven, called the school-to-school project. Again, it is a community initiative. The planning and the commitment to get the documents together to the level they have done is a credit to them all. There are a lot of land purchases and other property issues to be settled before this project can go ahead, but I will continue to fight to see if we can get Work for the Dole for it, once we get over these technical hurdles.

We should also reflect on some of the other achievements of the government. We have all heard about the abolition of the carbon tax and how $550 will make a big difference to the budgets of many families in my electorate. The removal of the mining tax will make a difference too because the budget had liabilities of up to $50 billion over the next decade as a result of the tax. It was the only tax that failed to raise much money at all and this huge liability is now off the Commonwealth's liability list. Recent free trade agreements with South Korea, Japan and China will have huge benefits for many sectors of the agricultural economy, but in particular beef and dairy will benefit in my electorate. We have given approval for over $1 trillion worth of new projects which, as they work through the system, will deliver greater employment and development in our regions.

The Minister for Agriculture has fought for $320 million drought support package, as well as farm household assistance services. We have recommenced the live trade export of sheep, cattle and goats to Bahrain, Iran, Egypt and Indonesia, and this has been very beneficial to farm-gate and saleyard prices in my electorate. The ripple-down effect of that disastrous policy failure by the previous government just about bankrupted even small landholders, let alone people in the Northern Territory. It rippled all the way south through the markets in Queensland into northern New South Wales and even down to the Lyne electorate, where people were actually removing animals from sale because the market had collapsed.

There are so many things this government has achieved in this first year and I am very pleased to see that a lot of these benefits are rolling out in the Lyne electorate.