Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to update the chamber on my ongoing campaign for a Manning Road on-ramp to be built in my electorate of Swan. It was interesting listening to the parliamentary secretary talk about his train station. I welcome him next time he is in Western Australia to come and look at the 'crime line' that runs through my electorate of Swan, and his station that he spoke about sounds very similar to my Burswood station. I have sympathy and empathy for his situation. It is also interesting that the previous member from the coalition, the member for Tangney, spoke about roads and infrastructure in Western Australia, because that is exactly what my issue is about as well.

It is an important local issue in my electorate and one that I have championed over a number of years. Manning Road is a major road that runs through the south of the Swan electorate and connects residents to the Kwinana Freeway which is the central freeway through to Perth and other major hubs in the metropolitan area.

As many of my constituents are aware, any car wishing to join the Kwinana Freeway going south from Manning Road has to negotiate a tricky stretch of road and do a loop around the freeway that involves merging and lane-changing back across the Canning bridge, and then heading south onto the Kwinana Freeway. The stretch of road is extremely dangerous, particularly during peak hour, and has been a constant cause of frustration for commuters from the area for over 20 years. A lingering frustration for residents is that they can easily travel north up the freeway from Manning Road, but they must add up to 15 minutes extra to their trip if they choose to travel south because they need to drive up the freeway, turn off at the next exit and then turn back around onto the south on-ramp.

My campaign for an on-ramp connecting Manning Road and Kwinana Freeway south would fix this problem. I note that the local state Liberal member, John McGrath MLA, has been an equally strong advocate for fixing this problem. John and I are hopeful that together we can get state and federal support to fix this long overdue piece of infrastructure. At the last election I was pleased to be able to launch a Liberal election commitment of $10 million towards the construction of the on-ramp. I note that my Labor opponent also called for this infrastructure to be implemented but got no commitment for it from the Labor Party. Unfortunately, we did not have the opportunity to form government after the last election and the government has not made any moves towards the on-ramp in this term, so the residents of Manning and the people in my electorate still have to wait. I received great feedback on our election commitment towards the on-ramp and many people have contacted me since to ask for an update.

On Saturday, I hosted the member for Gippsland and shadow parliamentary secretary for roads and regional infrastructure in Swan. The member for Gippsland enjoyed his visit to Swan and hearing about some of the local issues I am working on in the electorate. I took the member for Gippsland to the proposed site of the Manning Road on-ramp and was able to show him firsthand some of the problems created by the current state of the roads. The on-ramp should be built. We have been waiting for 20 years and I remain committed to making sure that this happens.