Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans’ Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

'Just fix the bloody roads!'—that is a message that I get every day in my electorate as I travel around from Morwell all the way through to Mallacoota and the New South Wales border. There's one road in particular which is the spine that runs through the electorate of Gippsland—the Princes Highway. The Princes Highway is the critical arterial road that carries the wealth of our community in terms of the goods we produce and products we take to market. It also brings the visitors to our community who are so important for our tourism economy. What bothers me is that, after almost four years now in government, the Labor Party, the Albanese government, has not allocated a single new dollar of expenditure in the budget for the Princes Highway, the most important transport route in my electorate. It beggars belief because what's happening now is the Princes Highway, in many sections, is simply falling apart. We know that poorly maintained road surfaces contribute to serious injuries and deaths on our roads. They also contribute to damage to cars. In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, many Gippslanders are telling me they're paying for repairs on their wheels, on their axles and on the alignment of their cars. They are paying the price for the Albanese government's neglect of the Princes Highway.

This is in stark contrast to when the coalition was in government. When we were in government, we had two packages of funding for the Princes Highway east of Bairnsdale. One was $50 million and one was $60 million. With that money, we put in six new overtaking lanes east of Bairnsdale and we upgraded the streetscapes of towns like Nicholson, Johnsonville, Swan Reach, Lakes Entrance, Numeralla, Cann River and Sale. On top of that, we funded the full duplication of the Princes Highway between Traralgon and Sale. The full duplication was funded during our time in government, and yet, in four years, there's been not a single dollar of new funding from the Albanese government.

But just when you think it couldn't get any worse it gets just a little bit worse. When we left government there was money in the Princes Highway corridor plan for work to occur in Victoria. Now, after four years, there's still $130 million sitting there in the budget to do work on the Princes Highway, but it depends on the Victorian Labor government providing some matching contributions. How do I explain this to my constituents, motorists, heavy-transport operators and tourists? How do I explain to them when they say to me, 'Fix the bloody roads!' that there's $130 million over there but it's just waiting for the state government of Victoria to actually match the funding? It is extraordinary that the Victorian Labor government are so incompetent, so completely ignorant of the needs of regional Victorians, that they would leave that $130 million sitting in the federal Treasury and not provide the matching funding. But, when you think about it, it's not that hard to understand because Premier Jacinta Allan, as infrastructure minister in charge of the Big Build and now the premier of the state, has sat back and watched as the CFMEU and bikie thugs have rorted $15 billion of taxpayers' money from Big Build projects. If they weren't wasting that $15 billion on criminal activity, surely they would have enough money to match the Commonwealth's funding of $130 million for the Princes Highway projects in my electorate?

So I say to the Victorian Labor Party and to those opposite: just get on with the job of fixing the bloody roads. People are killed and injured in high-speed crashes on roads which have potholes, no shoulders and a lack of overtaking lanes in many areas. There's money available if you just get your mates in Victoria to provide the matching funding. So I urge those opposite to start showing just an ounce of respect for the motorists in regional Victoria in places like Gippsland and just help us fix the bloody roads.

House adjourned at 19 : 59