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

While regional Australians and regional businesses are dealing with the problems of getting access to fuel, they're also dealing with the state of the road network. Regional Australia is facing some of the worst roads in this country.

Today I want to take this opportunity to mention a small corridor at the southern end of my electorate that thousands and thousands of constituents of mine have to contend with every day. I'm talking about Italia Road, Bucketts Way and Medowie Road intersections with the Pacific Highway. This isn't the first time that I've stood in this chamber and raised this issue. The reason I'm doing it is that for every day of delay in governments, both state and federal, addressing the problem at this intersection, we are a day closer to a very serious accident.

When I came into this place last year, I took the opportunity to go and see the minister for infrastructure—I'm very grateful to her for her drop-in sessions—about a $12 million commitment to do design and planning work at the Bucketts Way intersection. It's a commitment, I must say, that we—as in the coalition—also made at the last election. In fact, she stood at the intersection in my electorate with the member for Paterson and made the commitment. I was grateful for that too. I said to her: 'What's happening? This is an important commitment you made.' The answer was: 'I know nothing about it. Go and talk to the state minister.' She made the commitment, but didn't know anything about it.

So I wrote to the state minister for roads. Three months after writing to the minister, having written to her twice, in addition, to ask her for a response, I finally got a response. It's a very interesting one. I specifically asked what the timeframe is. People are contending with very, very dangerous intersections where they're crossing traffic going at 100 kilometres to 110 kilometres an hour. There are caravans, there are trucks and there are school buses trying to get across this intersection. I asked for a timeline on this work. I didn't get a timeline. What I got were two things. Firstly, I actually got a lie from the minister, claiming that it was Labor governments that made a $7.2 million commitment to do some work at the grade intersection at Italia Road and Medowie Road. That was, in fact, a coalition commitment. Secondly, as I've said, no timeframe for a grade separated interchange at Medowie Road and Bucketts Way—that is the only solution that will fix the problems my constituents are facing.