Andrew Gee (Calare, Independent) | Hansard source

We are now more than 100 days into the catastrophic, indefinite closure of the Great Western Highway at Victoria Pass. This is no longer a short-term disruption. It's a drawn-out economic execution of our region, and it's happening because of sheer, unadulterated government neglect. Let's be real about this. If a private corporation had caused this closure and shut down a major economic artery for over three months, starving our towns of customers and destroying local livelihoods, we wouldn't just be angry; we would be suing them into oblivion. Yet, when the government admits this disaster was a failure of government because of their inaction and negligence, what do we get? Accountability? Real compensation? No. The best the government can offer our struggling business owners is a pat on the head, a few crumbs and a recommendation to call a helpline. It's an insult, a sick joke. Are we seriously at the point where we need to sue our own governments just to get them to fix a disaster that they admitted that they created?

Main Street Lithgow is being bled dry and businesses are going broke. I've been out on Chifley Road talking to hardworking business owners who are staring down the barrel of financial ruin. Greg Nelson from Lithgow Tyre Service told me the drive-in trade has almost completely vanished, because people are terrified of being trapped in traffic gridlock for hours. Rod and Anne Gurney from R&A Chainsaw and Mower Supplies are watching cars and trucks shake their building every single day, but no-one can stop in. The regular customers from the Blue Mountains can't reach them. Rod's words should haunt this parliament. He told me: 'We have got to the stage where we really need to just move out, lock up and go. We've got no choice.' After 30 years in business, they have been forced to shut down.

There are many others who are simply going broke. The impacts are felt across the Central West. Tourism is down right across the region. This is the heartbreaking reality on the ground. And how does the New South Wales government respond? With a pathetic business support package that is woefully, hopelessly inadequate, which barely extends past Hartley and completely abandons Lithgow and beyond. We're told that we can't get disaster relief, because this isn't a natural disaster. Well, I've got news for you: we shouldn't need to wait for a bushfire, flood or act of God to get access to government support. This is a government made disaster. Government inaction caused it. They've admitted it and they just need to take responsibility, open the coffers and spend the money, but they won't do it. They won't do it, because they're too busy hoarding billions of dollars for their gold-plated vanity projects in Sydney and Newcastle, such as $7.4 billion for the Western Harbour Tunnel, $2.1 billion for the expressway to the new Sydney airport, $3.1 billion for the M6 Motorway in Sydney's south, $2.2 billion for the M1 extension to Raymond Terrace, $440 million for Windsor Road and up to $90 billion for high-speed rail to Newcastle. Meanwhile, our communities on the other side of the sandstone curtain are left with empty words and small change.

This is an absolute fiasco. Offering tiny, one-off grants that businesses can't even access until late June, forcing them to jump through bureaucratic hoops for a drip-fed pittance, is an insulting disgrace. We don't need more phone numbers and helplines. We want economic justice. We demand an ongoing, structured support package, a JobKeeper-style lifeline that matches the scale of the damage that this government has inflicted upon us. We want the Convict Bridge fixed and we want new, genuine high-speed access to Sydney.

How many more shops and businesses need to close before you wake up? How many more families have to lose everything before this government steps up, takes responsibility and pays for its own failures? We've had a gutful. It's the oldest rule in the book: you break it, you buy it. You knew the bridge was crumbling. You failed to upgrade it. Your neglect broke our economy, and now it's time to pay up. Do your jobs. Start governing for people west of the Great Dividing Range.

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