Alison Penfold (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on probably the most important issue for Lyne residents, certainly the one that is raised with me every day, and that is the state of roads right across the Lyne electorate. When I'm at mobile offices it is always an issue that comes up, and that was before we faced those terrible, catastrophic floods in May this year. The roads across the Lyne electorate were already in a pretty bad condition, but the floodwaters have made those roads significantly worse. It is a real challenge for all of my constituents to deal with the roads in the condition that they are in.

MidCoast Council certainly copped the most impact from the floods. They have recently completed an impact assessment on the event, and I read this very detailed document about the damage to the transport network in the MidCoast Council area, which is certainly the largest LGA in the Lyne electorate: the Pacific Highway, the region's major logistics route, was flooded and closed for five days; 2985 new road defects have been identified, with a further 376 existing issues worsened; 450-plus bridges are affected and undergoing engineering assessments; two bridges require full replacement at an estimated cost of $60 million, and seven additional bridges require major repairs; there have been 23 landslips, each estimated to cost $3 million to $5 million to repair; $258 million is required for immediate transport infrastructure repairs, and $265 million estimated for resilience and betterment works to prevent future disaster related damage. I have seen both the two bridges that have been completely destroyed, the Bight and Tyrone bridges. It is unbelievable to see structures—particularly the Bight bridge, which was a significant bridge structure—left in pieces, with pieces washed down the river taking out the amenities block at Wingham Brush. Basically it has divided the town.

From the same report, some of the impacts that have been noted are students needing to change schools as a result of the bridge being destroyed. This impacts on the social connectedness of students. It also impacts on enrolment numbers both positively and negatively for impacted schools, where subjects may be offered and teachers not required. The dairy truck every second day has to go via Gloucester Road from Dollys Flat to collect milk on the other side of the Manning River, impacting on transport timeframes by over 30 minutes. Postage delivery has been reduced to two days per week for those on Tinonee Road to collect mail not delivered from the postage office in Wingham. The travel time is 40 minutes each way. School bus drop-off and pick-up times have also been impacted. Tinonee Public School to Wingham typical times provided are, via Bight Bridge, 12 minutes; via Gloucester Road, 24 minutes; and, via Taree, 24 to 30 minutes. The impacts of the damage are very significant. When you talk to constituents, you just feel the challenges they are facing and the concern they have that funding is not flowing to the council and to other councils across the electorate to fix the problem. The conversations I'm aware of that councils are having are certainly not delivering the funds they need, and the issue around betterment funding is a major one. So far the New South Wales government, to my knowledge, have not responded in a positive fashion.

But further afield from the MidCoast Council, I want to highlight a very recent case study of the impact of what is happening on the roads. A constituent of mine's son recently had a head-on collision. I'm just reading the text message he sent me: 'Jack had a head-on. The other car was on his side of the road between Clarence Town and Seaham a touch before 7 am on his way to work at Phoenix Park. He somehow dodged being killed, with the airbags in the pride and joy 20-year-old Jeep deploying and breaking his nose. It crumbled beautifully, and if you look closely it looks like it's bent around the long axis. Ambos cut his Angels T-shirt off, which he didn't appreciate.' We could have had one less National Party voter because of this accident.

The reason the car veered was a huge pothole. A huge pothole almost caused an accident and killed a young man in his prime. Frankly, I hear these stories all the time of people having to dodge potholes effectively the size of craters. A small car can fall down them. It's a huge issue across the electorate, north to south. Other examples are on Harrington Road, a road that I drive quite often. Again, there's significant damage from the floods, when already the pavement was deteriorating. On Stroud Hill Road, a road I travel when I go to Dungog—which I actually did only on Saturday this week—there are more and more signs that council is having to put up to say, 'Potholes ahead'. These are roads where you could normally drive 80 kilometres per hour. You're slowing down to 30 kilometres per hour to ensure that you're not doing damage to your vehicle.

There's also The Lakes Way. This is a major road. I know some members holiday in the wonderful electorate of Lyne, and particularly those in Sydney, who often travel up to Forster and Pacific Palms and that area, will turn off the highway onto The Lakes Way. That is now a shocking road. And it's a local road. It used to once be the Pacific Highway, but it's now under the management of MidCoast Council. One of my staff members, who lives out that way and has to travel on The Lakes Way, actually even sent me an email as her local member to let me know what the challenges are. She says: 'Driving home on The Lakes Way, typically a 100-kilometre-an-hour highway, cars had to slow to 30 kilometres an hour for prolonged periods due to severe potholes and road damage. The surface is so bad that the safest option is often to drive on the wrong side of the road or hanging partly off the road to avoid car damage.' My state colleague, the member for Myall Lakes, has recently called for the New South Wales Minns government to take action and declare The Lakes Way a state road, and I fully support that call.

This is a significant piece of infrastructure that is beyond the means of MidCoast Council, a council that has a road network—I think some of the city members in this place might be interested to understand the extent of the road networks that councils to have deal with in regional and rural areas—which is 3,643 km of roads and 667 bridges. With the rate base of MidCoast Council, it is frankly beyond them to continue to maintain the roads to the standard that the community rightly expects. There's a lot of anger in the community about the state of our roads. Rates keep rising, but roads keep getting worse. It's not just MidCoast Council; Dungog Shire Council has in excess of 70 km. This is a very small council area with a very significant concessional rate base, and they struggle to continue to be able to maintain their roads.

These councils are raising the issue of the Local Government Financial Assistance Grants, the grants that are provided to local governments through the NSW Local Government Grants Commission. It's become clear that the financial assistance grants are no longer fit for purpose. They no longer serve the interests of regional councils in particular. I understand, particularly from Dungog, who I have had a number of conversations with, that there are councils in this country that receive more money from their parking meters than the entire budget of Dungog Shire Council. Yet these councils get significantly more from financial assistance grants. It simply isn't fair. The grant system is no longer fit for purpose and needs to be overhauled.

I will move on, in the time I have remaining—and I could talk about all of the problems on roads for a much longer period—as I want to raise the Pacific Highway. The Pacific Highway and its duplication was a great achievement of the coalition in the Howard government era. It came in response to some terrible bus crashes at Kempsey and Grafton. I did, in my first speech, acknowledge the work of the former member for Lyne, the Hon. Mark Vaile, in the work that he did to get that duplication started. But in 1996, when the work was done, there was an urgency to get the duplication completed, so the decision was taken at the time to do the four-laning and then come back to do the integrated overpasses. But, in the passage of time, the work to come back and do the overpasses has been overlooked by successive governments. It was an issue that the former member for Lyne, the Hon. Dr David Gillespie, raised in this place, and I intend to do the same because, again, this goes to the safety of residents across the Lyne electorate and visitors to the Lyne electorate.

I was very pleased, during the federal election, that one election commitment I made was supported by those on the other side. It goes to planning and design work for an integrated overpass at Medowie Road and at the Bucketts Way with a service road to Italia Road. Again, the Bucketts Way itself is a major issue, with significant need for repair, but these intersections are very dangerous. We've got fast-moving traffic and a lot of load coming onto it from the catchment areas. A lot of schoolchildren now are going to Medowie private schools and Catholic schools, and they're coming out of areas in my electorate, so these two overpasses are dangerous. People say to me quite often that they hope that we do not need one more death on the Pacific Highway at these interchanges for work to be done.

So I was very pleased that there was one commitment that was supported by the other side, and I followed up with the minister. I'm very grateful to the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government for her drop-in sessions. At the very first one she held after I was elected, I went to see her and spoke to her about the timetable for the work here at Medowie Road, Bucketts Way and Italia Road. I understand—and I'm very grateful for and acknowledge—that the Commonwealth has provisioned the funding, but we're awaiting confirmation on delivery timeframes from the New South Wales government. I hope those timeframes will be expedited.

There are a number of other intersections that need to be dealt with: the Myall Way, the Lakes Way, Failford Road and two more, in particular. One is the Harrington-Coopernook interchange. In 2021, under a coalition government, we committed $48 million to get this interchange completed. What has been done? Nothing. Nothing has been done. I can tell you that the anger in the community in Harrington is extreme. There have been two ramps there for over 20 years, and yet there has been no work done, despite the fact that the money is there. There is also the Houston Mitchell Drive interchange. This is the most dangerous intersection on the Pacific Highway. It should be a priority for an interchange, but no commitment from the other side for funding has been made.

I finish with this point on the Pacific Highway: under the coalition government, our commitment to funding work on the highway was 80 per cent Commonwealth, 20 per cent New South Wales government. But, under the Albanese government, it's now fifty-fifty. The Albanese government has slashed funding for work on the Pacific Highway. This is putting people's lives in danger, and I will continue, for every moment that I have a breath in this parliament, to raise the issue, because it is of such significance to the people of the Lyne electorate.

Debate interrupted.

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