Jamie Chaffey (Parkes, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

Most Australians have travelled on regional roads. These roads are not only the network that links cities and takes our goods to the rest of Australia and to the ports for export; they are the tracks that link regional communities together. They link families to health services, supermarkets, sport and friends. They are the routes travelled by emergency services to save lives. They are critical in the production of food, fibre and minerals. They are critical and they are crumbling.

As the devoted member for Mallee just said in trying to bring this situation to the Labor government's attention, local roads make up 77 per cent of Australia's road network, and 678,000 kilometres are managed by local government. We hear all the time that there is a growing disconnect between funds needed and safe roads. The statistics show that people have good reason to be concerned. Regional road funding under the Albanese government is going backwards despite increasing costs and challenges. Councils, such as the 20 councils within my electorate, the electorate of Parkes, simply do not have the funds to keep this unwieldy burden afloat. They alone cannot wear the costs of keeping Australia connected. I look at the data from NRMA, and it shows that the road infrastructure backlog for the 20 councils in the Parkes electorate between 2017 and 2020 in the last four years of the coalition government averaged $86.2 million. Road funding grants over the seven years averaged $102.4 million. The end result is that road funding under the Nationals and Liberals was there, ready to meet the needs to ensure safer roads in our communities.

For the past three years of Labor governments, the backlog figure has blown out to an average of $236.7 million a year. This means now councils only receive 43 per cent of the funds they need to address that backlog in the Parkes electorate. This is an increase of more than 250 per cent in the Parkes electorate alone in the years of the Albanese Labor government.

To dig a little deeper into what's happening on the ground, let's take a look at disaster relief funding arrangements. All of the councils in the Parkes electorate have suffered from some sort of natural disaster in the past three to four years, with the exception of Broken Hill. This means councils have been at the mercy of government to provide funding for massive recovery works. There is no luxury in this; this is purely and simply getting the road network back into working order after a flooding event or another natural disaster.

I asked the question of my councils and found that, between June 2021 and June 2024, Labor governments knocked back in the order of $150 million to fix road damage through the disaster in the Parkes electorate alone. That means only 64 per cent of the claims from councils were approved. The Lachlan shire alone—including the town of Condoblin in New South Wales—was severely impacted by flooding events. Only $25.9 million was approved out of an application of $54.9 million needed to fix the roads. That's a $25.9 million shortfall in one shire alone. Narrabri Shire Council had only $8.5 million approved out of $30 million needed to fix their roads. I ask Labor: where can Narrabri community find $21.5 million to fix the roads? Council are not receiving the money they need to return roads back to pre-flooding events, let alone flood-proofing them so that they are built back better, ready to stand strong for the next event. Gilgandra shire was left with a $9 million shortfall, Bourke with a $14.9 million shortfall and Dubbo with a $20.6 million shortfall. These are councils that must face the questions about road closures, delayed roadworks and potholes every single day. They've been left to deal with the frustrations of people who can't use these roads each and every day.

A thin strip of bitumen cannot last forever and the investment to maintain and improve our roads is just not happening. Councils are forced to consider building or rebuilding roads for a price instead of a standard. But don't worry, the Albanese government found a solution. They're now asking rural regional people to drive more slowly—70 kilometres an hour, we've just heard. All of our problems can be solved by driving around potholes and natural disaster damage. We can just move more and more slowly as road funding dries up and roads fall into disrepair until eventually there will be no roads at all.

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