Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to talk about a critical infrastructure project. It is critical for the Goulburn Valley, critical for one of the great food bowls of our country and critical for the residents and people of the Greater Shepparton area. That project is the Shepparton bypass. That project has the sword of Damocles hanging over its head. I sincerely hope that that sword doesn't fall.

I will give a bit of background. The Goulburn Valley Highway was declared part of the national highway system in 1992. In 1995 VicRoads commenced a planning study that settled the alignment of the bypass. The full 36-kilometre four-lane Shepparton bypass was estimated to cost just over $1.3 billion. After years of inaction it was decided that, in order to make the investment affordable, a five-stage bypass proposal was approved, so it was broken up into smaller chunks.

Stage 1 will link Shepparton and Mooroopna and includes, most critically, a second crossing of the Goulburn River. That second crossing of the Goulburn River is absolutely critical to this region, as we found during October last year when my region was inundated by floods. The only river crossing, and the only way between the western and the eastern sides of the river, was cut by floodwaters. The new bypass second crossing would not have been cut and we would have still had access to both sides. Emergency service vehicles and critical agricultural produce would have been able to have access. I note the comments of the member for Forrest on the importance of the dairy industry. We couldn't get milk from one side of the river to the other. We couldn't get fruit from one side of the river to the other. All that perishable produce couldn't get where it needed to go.

The Shepparton bypass is critical in so many ways. When it is built it will also take traffic and heavy traffic out of the main streets of Shepparton. The traffic will circumnavigate the CBD. That will be so important for the development of new businesses and shops who want to set up in the middle of Shepparton but don't want to do it when a big noisy truck is going to come straight past either their shop or their hospitality premises.

The Shepparton bypass is part of the government's 90-day review. In 2019 the coalition committed $208 million to get the project moving and to encourage the Victorian government to present a business case and get the project ready to go. The Victorian government developed a business case. The next step was for them to prioritise the project and formally request funding, and that didn't happen before the federal election. Now the funding of the project is in jeopardy because of this 90-day review. This independent review is of $120 billion of infrastructure projects that the coalition earmarked.

I'm really worried—and I hope I'm wrong—that this review will lead to projects that are critical to regional areas and regional economies, such as the Shepparton bypass, being scrapped in favour of projects that are focused on metropolitan regions, such as the Suburban Rail Loop, which I might add at the moment has a price tag in excess of $30 billion, has no business case attached to it and will suck the life out of all of the infrastructure funding that Victoria needs over the next number of years.

The people of Shepparton, Greater Shepparton and Mooroopna have been waiting for this bypass and waiting for governments to get active about it. The previous coalition government did by making a significant commitment of over $200 million. I accept it's going to cost more than that, but that was the estimate on the best costings that were available at the time. The Victorian government needs to get on with prioritising this project and make a formal request, and the federal government needs to fund it appropriately. It cannot become part of this 90-day review that might see the funding scrapped entirely and us having to wait another 10 years to even propose the project. Let's build the Shepparton bypass.