Jodie Belyea (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Albanese Labor government is aspirational, and it is a reflection of the community of Dunkley, which has got a big heart and lots of opportunity. Dunkley is home to a tight-knit community of families, children, older people, key industry workers and students. It is an emerging regional centre for many community organisations working to support those most in need, small-business owners and everything in between. I am very proud to call Dunkley my home. It's a place close to me, as I have lived and worked in the community for 30 years.

Frankston, affectionately known to locals as Franga, has often borne the brunt of jokes. It has had a reputation of being a rough area because of its location at the end of the train line. Up until about 10 years ago, there was an underinvestment in the community, but that has slowly but surely changed. Dunkley is an incredible community with a can-do spirit. We're proud people. We care about each other. We help each other every day. We are demographically diverse. I saw a mix of wealth, poverty and everything in between as I doorknocked in every suburb around the electorate; 37,000 doors, 30,000 phone calls and 20,000 conversations gave me a really solid picture of who our community is and are.

Talking to locals involved in community sport, service clubs and organisations highlights time and time again that we punch above our weight as a community. We are, despite our reputation, an ambitious and motivated lot of people. Indeed, there is no better symbol of our community's improvement than the recent success of our much-loved Frankston Dolphins Football Netball Club. Our community gathered when it was failing, and it was backed by the local state member Paul Edbrooke advocating to ensure the club's viability. Now our beloved Dolphins are in the qualifying finals, and the community is buzzing with excitement at the prospect of the club taking out the VFL title. Good luck to the Dolphins team, players, coaches and board. All you have achieved these past eight years has landed you in the qualifying finals this weekend.

Things are changing. The Dunkley community is transitioning from a town to a city. We are dusting ourselves off as individuals and a community, standing taller and prouder as we think big and implement our vision for the future in so many different ways. In the last decade, thanks to investment from the federal and state Labor governments, we have seen record investment in the area, and it is paying dividends in improved public transport, better connectivity, the redevelopment of Chisholm Institute and the soon-to-be-completed $1 billion Peninsula University Hospital. It means our community can access world-class health services and education and make Dunkley their home without compromising their living standards.

Thanks to the work of the late Peta Murphy from 2019 to 2023, $220 million worth of funding commitments have continued to materialise into some incredible facilities and services for the people of Dunkley. We've got the Jubilee Park Stadium, the Frankston district netball and basketball stadium redevelopment, Emil Madsen Reserve and the Ballam Park redevelopment. We've got the First People's Health and Wellbeing clinic, a new Medicare urgent care clinic and car parks at both Frankston and Kananook stations.

Our aspirations to grow from a town to a city have been further supported through the endorsement of the Frankston Metropolitan Activity Centre. A plan for the ongoing revitalisation of Frankston was signed off by Frankston City Council and the Victorian state government earlier this year. This vision for growth and revitalisation has been supported by the federal government. These past 18 months, the Prime Minister himself has visited the community seven times, as he understands the opportunities and ambitions of our community. Since the by-election, he has supported my advocacy efforts, ensuring we build a thriving, inclusive community.

This year alone, $109 million has been invested into Dunkley thanks to the Albanese Labor government. We have critical infrastructure projects: a $50 million investment into the Nepean Highway and Overton Road precinct; a $7.6 million investment into the much-deserved Bruce Park and Len Phelps reserve; $25 million for Thompsons Road upgrades; and over $1.7 million for the Frankston bowls club, which is a hub for so many older people in our community, who love to come together and bowl on the weekends and during the week. And it doesn't stop there. There's almost half a million dollars for SmackTalk, Wayne Holdsworth's work, nearly $1 million for the Brotherhood of St Laurence for their Thrive Hub and funding for the McClelland gallery.

Dunkley is a hive of volunteer and community organisations that work with people from all walks of life. I have been a volunteer in the community for many years and know there are so many people who give up their evenings and weekends to run the widest range of organisations and activities that you can imagine—basketball, bowling, cricket, football, netball, scouts, soccer and tennis, not to mention art, ballet, theatre schools, swimming groups and service clubs. In Dunkley, we've got it all. And, at a time when volunteering across Australia is at its lowest, in Dunkley it's as strong as ever.

In my first speech, I spoke about our volunteer community and about volunteers being the backbone of our community. To the volunteers of Dunkley: you are amazing. I love coming to visit you at your different activities to see the incredible work you do for so many that we need to support. This past six months, this government has committed $147,000 to 43 organisations through volunteer grants and stronger communities funding. We've invested $85,000 for stronger communities organisations and $62,000 for volunteer groups. Congratulations to all of you for the incredible work you have done to deliver much-needed services and support to people in Dunkley. You are local champions, and I thank you.

But I'm not done there. I'm acutely aware of the significant challenges surrounding men's health nationally—predominantly in Dunkley. Dunkley, unfortunately, has higher-than-state-average suicide rates. It is imperative for me that I do what I can as a local MP to facilitate and support conversations in my community about suicide so that people understand and are able to address this issue locally. On 12 November, I will be hosting a men's health and wellbeing forum with the Special Envoy for Men's Health, Dan Repacholi. We will be inviting men, including young men, from the community, community organisations and schools to come together so we can hear their thoughts and ideas about what we have and what we're missing.

We are also working towards a local Louisa Dunkley roundtable with the Minister for Social Services and the Assistant Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence in early 2026. The event will provide agencies working with women and families that have lived experience an opportunity to come together and share their experiences and their solutions and to understand what more we can do as a government.

For 20 years of my career, I worked with young people from all corners of this country, youth dealing with trauma who wanted to climb out of the clutches of disadvantage that comes with abuse, domestic and family violence, substance abuse, unemployment and learning difficulties. Young people are increasingly passionate and committed to social justice, equity and fairness, doing their bit for our great country. To ensure more young people have the life and employment skills and confidence to lead and navigate the complex issues we face now and into the future, we must invest in them. We need to provide spaces and places that give them hope and a sense of possibility through the provision of programs such as leadership initiatives that build them up and keep them connected, creating hope and a sense of possibility—because you can't be what you can't see. I remain committed to working with all stakeholders and community groups to deliver the best outcomes for Dunkley. I will work to offer young people opportunities to learn, to live to their potential and lead through the Dunkley Emerging Leaders Program.

And while we are supporting young people to learn, grow and lead, we need to work on providing people with every chance to have a roof over their head. During the by-election and recent election, I heard so many stories that illustrated the scale of the challenges we face on housing affordability—women forced to move house with their children due to rent increases; women that are fleeing domestic and family violence; a young trainee childcare worker whose rent had increased so much that they were now selling personal items to be able to afford their next rent.

These past 18 months the federal government has invested $43 billion into housing—that is an incredible investment. We have an ambitious target of building 1.2 million homes. We've got the Crisis and Transition Accommodation Program. We've got the Help to Buy scheme that will enable first homebuyers to purchase a home with just five per cent deposit. This initiative, this week, has been brought forward to commence in 2025. We have a target in Dunkley to build 33,000 homes. We have a range of organisations—with land, a vision and some money to invest—that are keen to help build more homes and to ensure that we have roofs over people's heads.

It's time we bring all of these stakeholders together to work on a solution to build a mix of homes for people from all walks of life in Dunkley. Throughout my career I've worked with organisations and communities to build local, state and national-level programs that provide solutions to a social issue—or what we call 'a wicked problem'. Housing is a wicked problem. Creating solutions to this problem means bringing people with aspirations and ideas together, and that is what I intend to do in Dunkley.

In November, the Minister for Housing will bring together local, state and federal government, community organisations, housing providers and investors and those with land, business plans and a commitment to invest in housing. There are significant gains to be made with regard to meeting housing supply targets. We need a mix of housing for a range of people from all walks of life. Transitional housing, veterans' housing, aged care, retirement villages, key worker housing, and social and affordable housing; the list is long and broad.

As we work towards this transition, we must build a climate-resilient community and infrastructure and look after our best natural asset in Dunkley—the bay—so everyone can enjoy it. We need to be respectful of the environment and our waterways, while ensuring we maximise renewable energy projects, which will be critical in this transition for generations to come.

No one level of government or organisation is going to be able to achieve the target of 33,000 homes on its own. We need all players to come together as a collective to understand the appetite and opportunities—the innovators, the investors, the community organisations and the community leaders who are committed to laying and building firm foundations—lots of them together, not in isolation.

Labor's achievements in Dunkley since 2018 make me very proud, but I know that the people of Dunkley re-elected me to continue bringing to life our bold and visionary agenda. To all the residents from Chelsea to Carrum Downs, Mount Eliza to Patterson Lakes and Karingal to Langwarrin—I am committed to delivering for Dunkley, now and into the future, by being a strong local voice in Canberra.

Now is the time for us to walk the talk, work together and deliver the outcomes our community needs—outcomes on the land of the Bunurong people, the land by the sea, the best place to be.

Alison Penfold (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on probably the most important issue for Lyne residents, certainly the one that is raised with me every day, and that is the state of roads right across the Lyne electorate. When I'm at mobile offices it is always an issue that comes up, and that was before we faced those terrible, catastrophic floods in May this year. The roads across the Lyne electorate were already in a pretty bad condition, but the floodwaters have made those roads significantly worse. It is a real challenge for all of my constituents to deal with the roads in the condition that they are in.

MidCoast Council certainly copped the most impact from the floods. They have recently completed an impact assessment on the event, and I read this very detailed document about the damage to the transport network in the MidCoast Council area, which is certainly the largest LGA in the Lyne electorate: the Pacific Highway, the region's major logistics route, was flooded and closed for five days; 2985 new road defects have been identified, with a further 376 existing issues worsened; 450-plus bridges are affected and undergoing engineering assessments; two bridges require full replacement at an estimated cost of $60 million, and seven additional bridges require major repairs; there have been 23 landslips, each estimated to cost $3 million to $5 million to repair; $258 million is required for immediate transport infrastructure repairs, and $265 million estimated for resilience and betterment works to prevent future disaster related damage. I have seen both the two bridges that have been completely destroyed, the Bight and Tyrone bridges. It is unbelievable to see structures—particularly the Bight bridge, which was a significant bridge structure—left in pieces, with pieces washed down the river taking out the amenities block at Wingham Brush. Basically it has divided the town.

From the same report, some of the impacts that have been noted are students needing to change schools as a result of the bridge being destroyed. This impacts on the social connectedness of students. It also impacts on enrolment numbers both positively and negatively for impacted schools, where subjects may be offered and teachers not required. The dairy truck every second day has to go via Gloucester Road from Dollys Flat to collect milk on the other side of the Manning River, impacting on transport timeframes by over 30 minutes. Postage delivery has been reduced to two days per week for those on Tinonee Road to collect mail not delivered from the postage office in Wingham. The travel time is 40 minutes each way. School bus drop-off and pick-up times have also been impacted. Tinonee Public School to Wingham typical times provided are, via Bight Bridge, 12 minutes; via Gloucester Road, 24 minutes; and, via Taree, 24 to 30 minutes. The impacts of the damage are very significant. When you talk to constituents, you just feel the challenges they are facing and the concern they have that funding is not flowing to the council and to other councils across the electorate to fix the problem. The conversations I'm aware of that councils are having are certainly not delivering the funds they need, and the issue around betterment funding is a major one. So far the New South Wales government, to my knowledge, have not responded in a positive fashion.

But further afield from the MidCoast Council, I want to highlight a very recent case study of the impact of what is happening on the roads. A constituent of mine's son recently had a head-on collision. I'm just reading the text message he sent me: 'Jack had a head-on. The other car was on his side of the road between Clarence Town and Seaham a touch before 7 am on his way to work at Phoenix Park. He somehow dodged being killed, with the airbags in the pride and joy 20-year-old Jeep deploying and breaking his nose. It crumbled beautifully, and if you look closely it looks like it's bent around the long axis. Ambos cut his Angels T-shirt off, which he didn't appreciate.' We could have had one less National Party voter because of this accident.

The reason the car veered was a huge pothole. A huge pothole almost caused an accident and killed a young man in his prime. Frankly, I hear these stories all the time of people having to dodge potholes effectively the size of craters. A small car can fall down them. It's a huge issue across the electorate, north to south. Other examples are on Harrington Road, a road that I drive quite often. Again, there's significant damage from the floods, when already the pavement was deteriorating. On Stroud Hill Road, a road I travel when I go to Dungog—which I actually did only on Saturday this week—there are more and more signs that council is having to put up to say, 'Potholes ahead'. These are roads where you could normally drive 80 kilometres per hour. You're slowing down to 30 kilometres per hour to ensure that you're not doing damage to your vehicle.

There's also The Lakes Way. This is a major road. I know some members holiday in the wonderful electorate of Lyne, and particularly those in Sydney, who often travel up to Forster and Pacific Palms and that area, will turn off the highway onto The Lakes Way. That is now a shocking road. And it's a local road. It used to once be the Pacific Highway, but it's now under the management of MidCoast Council. One of my staff members, who lives out that way and has to travel on The Lakes Way, actually even sent me an email as her local member to let me know what the challenges are. She says: 'Driving home on The Lakes Way, typically a 100-kilometre-an-hour highway, cars had to slow to 30 kilometres an hour for prolonged periods due to severe potholes and road damage. The surface is so bad that the safest option is often to drive on the wrong side of the road or hanging partly off the road to avoid car damage.' My state colleague, the member for Myall Lakes, has recently called for the New South Wales Minns government to take action and declare The Lakes Way a state road, and I fully support that call.

This is a significant piece of infrastructure that is beyond the means of MidCoast Council, a council that has a road network—I think some of the city members in this place might be interested to understand the extent of the road networks that councils to have deal with in regional and rural areas—which is 3,643 km of roads and 667 bridges. With the rate base of MidCoast Council, it is frankly beyond them to continue to maintain the roads to the standard that the community rightly expects. There's a lot of anger in the community about the state of our roads. Rates keep rising, but roads keep getting worse. It's not just MidCoast Council; Dungog Shire Council has in excess of 70 km. This is a very small council area with a very significant concessional rate base, and they struggle to continue to be able to maintain their roads.

These councils are raising the issue of the Local Government Financial Assistance Grants, the grants that are provided to local governments through the NSW Local Government Grants Commission. It's become clear that the financial assistance grants are no longer fit for purpose. They no longer serve the interests of regional councils in particular. I understand, particularly from Dungog, who I have had a number of conversations with, that there are councils in this country that receive more money from their parking meters than the entire budget of Dungog Shire Council. Yet these councils get significantly more from financial assistance grants. It simply isn't fair. The grant system is no longer fit for purpose and needs to be overhauled.

I will move on, in the time I have remaining—and I could talk about all of the problems on roads for a much longer period—as I want to raise the Pacific Highway. The Pacific Highway and its duplication was a great achievement of the coalition in the Howard government era. It came in response to some terrible bus crashes at Kempsey and Grafton. I did, in my first speech, acknowledge the work of the former member for Lyne, the Hon. Mark Vaile, in the work that he did to get that duplication started. But in 1996, when the work was done, there was an urgency to get the duplication completed, so the decision was taken at the time to do the four-laning and then come back to do the integrated overpasses. But, in the passage of time, the work to come back and do the overpasses has been overlooked by successive governments. It was an issue that the former member for Lyne, the Hon. Dr David Gillespie, raised in this place, and I intend to do the same because, again, this goes to the safety of residents across the Lyne electorate and visitors to the Lyne electorate.

I was very pleased, during the federal election, that one election commitment I made was supported by those on the other side. It goes to planning and design work for an integrated overpass at Medowie Road and at the Bucketts Way with a service road to Italia Road. Again, the Bucketts Way itself is a major issue, with significant need for repair, but these intersections are very dangerous. We've got fast-moving traffic and a lot of load coming onto it from the catchment areas. A lot of schoolchildren now are going to Medowie private schools and Catholic schools, and they're coming out of areas in my electorate, so these two overpasses are dangerous. People say to me quite often that they hope that we do not need one more death on the Pacific Highway at these interchanges for work to be done.

So I was very pleased that there was one commitment that was supported by the other side, and I followed up with the minister. I'm very grateful to the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government for her drop-in sessions. At the very first one she held after I was elected, I went to see her and spoke to her about the timetable for the work here at Medowie Road, Bucketts Way and Italia Road. I understand—and I'm very grateful for and acknowledge—that the Commonwealth has provisioned the funding, but we're awaiting confirmation on delivery timeframes from the New South Wales government. I hope those timeframes will be expedited.

There are a number of other intersections that need to be dealt with: the Myall Way, the Lakes Way, Failford Road and two more, in particular. One is the Harrington-Coopernook interchange. In 2021, under a coalition government, we committed $48 million to get this interchange completed. What has been done? Nothing. Nothing has been done. I can tell you that the anger in the community in Harrington is extreme. There have been two ramps there for over 20 years, and yet there has been no work done, despite the fact that the money is there. There is also the Houston Mitchell Drive interchange. This is the most dangerous intersection on the Pacific Highway. It should be a priority for an interchange, but no commitment from the other side for funding has been made.

I finish with this point on the Pacific Highway: under the coalition government, our commitment to funding work on the highway was 80 per cent Commonwealth, 20 per cent New South Wales government. But, under the Albanese government, it's now fifty-fifty. The Albanese government has slashed funding for work on the Pacific Highway. This is putting people's lives in danger, and I will continue, for every moment that I have a breath in this parliament, to raise the issue, because it is of such significance to the people of the Lyne electorate.

Debate interrupted.