Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A very, very welcome addition to the electorate of Nicholls is the township of Kilmore. I've had ongoing engagement with the community. It's a great community. It's actually the community where I went to school. There are a lot of priority projects that that community needs, including the bypass, which has long been mooted but never really progressed, and also the link road. It's got some challenges. It's got a very narrow streetscape, but it's a growing community. The infrastructure issues in Nicholls are very important to the constituents. It's a regional area. It requires infrastructure upgrades. I've written to the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government about these priority projects. I hope to get a response, and I hope to get some positive action towards some funding towards these critical infrastructure projects.

A critical one in the region around Nagambie is Kirwans Bridge. I've raised this directly with the minister, and we've made a number of funding applications for this, but we haven't been able to get a resolution. Kirwans Bridge is a heritage bridge. It's a wooden bridge. It was damaged in the 2022 floods. As a result of that damage, it was closed down. The Strathbogie Shire estimate that it would cost in the vicinity of $7 million to $8 million to repair it to the point where it could be opened up again and connect two communities. The two communities have been completely isolated from each other because of the inability of this bridge, which spans the Goulburn Weir, to be opened, so I'm hoping we can get a resolution on that.

I also made commitments that, if we formed government, we would provide funding towards the redevelopment of the Shepparton Sports Stadium, which is a critical part of Shepparton's visitor economy; the Shepparton bypass; and the completion of the final stages of the Welsford Street arterial road. Shepparton's a growing community, as are many of the communities in Nicholls, and the infrastructure needs to keep up. In my experience, before I came into this place, it did keep up with investment from the coalition government, but that's been lacking a bit in the last three years. So I'm hoping that the Labor government focuses on regional infrastructure and that we can get some things moving. The projects that funded those were the Roads of Strategic Importance, the Building Better Regions Fund, the Regional Airports Program, and the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program.

I do give credit to the Labor government for their Growing Regions Program. There was $15 million for the Seymour Community Wellbeing Hub and $11 million for upgrades to Echuca's Victoria Park. That's welcome, but Growing Regions has ended now, and there doesn't seem to be any budget allocation to continue it on for the other infrastructure projects that are needed. I'm hoping that that happens, and that regional infrastructure becomes a priority of this government as it was of the previous coalition government.