Sean Bell (NSW, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

On 2 July, I wrote to the Prime Minister imploring him to declare the Great Western Highway—which is cracked and crumbling, and now closed—a disaster. The government has declined to act.

Now, today, another local business has gone to the wall. The Triple 8 Cafe at South Bowenfels is closing its doors. This is what happens when the government fails to act. Family businesses get shut down. Workers lose shifts. And now a community is losing another local employer.

For 114 days, following the highway cracking and crumbling, communities and businesses across the Blue Mountains and the Central West have been cut off from customers' trade and certainty. We asked the government to act. We wrote to the Prime Minister. Again, they have declined to declare this a disaster. We asked for the government to provide urgent Commonwealth support for businesses and communities being smashed by this disaster, and again they have ignored those calls.

What's worse is that Labor has put no new money into the Great Western Highway in the federal budget. The locals are being told they'll have to wait another year for a repair job—a temporary fix—while the region remains no closer to having the infrastructure, the highway, they should have had years ago. This disaster is nearly two decades in the making. It's the result of constant government inaction. The need for a proper route between Mount Victoria and Lithgow has been known for years. Labor knows it. The Liberals know it. The Nationals know it. Every government that has looked at this knows that this is what is needed.

The warning signs were there, but they left the job undone, and now the entire region is paying the price. Families and businesses are going to the wall, and it's not good enough. This business didn't close because it had not worked hard enough. It closed because it had not received the infrastructure or the support from the federal government that it needed. One Nation is saying, 'Enough!' The Central West needs urgent disaster support for these affected businesses.