Barnaby Joyce (New England, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to talk about one laurel for the government and three barbs. The laurel is that I want to thank them for the money that we've got for road 358. It's the second range crossing for the New England Highway that goes from Willow Tree to Merriwa. It's the only road I'm going to get to open twice in my career because, the first time we opened it, it fell into the creek and they had to redo it again, and now we're going to open it a second time.

And here are the three barbs. Another east-west road requires upgrade at the Port Stephens Cutting. Someone is going to get killed there. Unless you're on the two-way, you do not know about timber trucks coming down, and there are completely blind corners. It is widely used because it's the shortest route to the coast, and we've had logs come off trucks and go through cars as they come down. There's $20 million allocated to fix this up, but the federal government is just not starting. They're not allocating the money. It's got to be allocated, or you have to be somehow responsible for any accident that happens.

The next one is in the city of Tamworth. We've got the money put aside to upgrade the New England Highway from the Calala roundabout out to Greg Norman Drive along the Goonoo Goonoo Road—it's part of the New England Highway—but it's just never started. They keep pushing it back and pushing it back and pushing it back and pushing it back, and the cost keeps going up and up and up. The people of the city of Tamworth—over 70,000 people—keep on asking, 'When is this going to start?' And all I can say is that that's a good question for Catherine King. The money has been in the budget; it's just that the motivation is not in the government.

The final thing is something very close to my heart. Unfortunately and tragically, the other day there was a fatality on the Moonbi Range. This has happened now a number of times. People go onto Google Maps and find the next route. Well, the next route is the Danglemah Road. I live on it. The Danglemah Road was only built in 1927 because the country south of Danglemah was too wild. It's a single-lane dirt road, and then next thing it turns into a national highway, and it's just bumper to bumper with cars going in both directions and Teslas that won't go off the road because they weigh too much and they're scared of it. We had one truck that went off the side. We had to get chains to chain it up so it didn't fall off a cliff. People have absolutely no idea how to drive on these roads. It is pandemonium. If it happened once, it would be a novelty. But this has now happened numerous times.

If you're not going to stop traffic being diverted up Danglemah Road, then you have to fix up Danglemah Road so it can be an alternate route in times of crisis—and it's certainly not that. The last time major work happened on Danglemah Road was the Great Depression, and not much has happened since. If anybody out there is listening to this: please fix up Danglemah Road.

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