CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS
Mr JOYCE (New England) (09:30): We've had the announcement of $1.74 billion to be invested in three key New South Wales roads. Two of these are in the electorate of New England. I welcome the announcements, but we've already announced a lot of this stuff before.
It's just that it doesn't get built. What we have to do is make sure that announcements actually turn into outcomes. One of the classic ones in New England is the Tenterfield bypass.
The Tenterfield heavy vehicle bypass is essential for the safety of the people in the town of Tenterfield and for the even flow of traffic through the centre of Tenterfield that goes down to 40 kilometres an hour. It just doesn't work for people moving haulage. You have to try and work on an average speed of 80 kilometres an hour, which requires the roads to have a speed limit of around about 100, and it can't be slowing down to 40 kilometres an hour.
There are other areas where we would wish to see things formally announced move on, especially the Goonoo Goonoo Road duplication from Calala Lane to Greg Norman Drive. We also have the Lily Creek section between Bendemeer and Uralla. These are dangerous areas that need to be fixed.
We have got the Rocky Cut realignment at Wingen. This is also incredibly important. We've announced it in the past.
We announced it under a coalition government. It's just never been built, and what I'm worried about with this is the amount that's been discussed, the $849.8 million for the Muswellbrook to Armidale corridor—we're going to get yet another announcement without the actual construction of the road. One of the reasons that they might be finding this a little bit imperative is the construction of the swindle factories, the intermittent power precincts.
They are finding it very difficult to get the massive blades and everything up. Of course, they'd never thought of the logistics of how you move these things around before you build your swindle factories to destroy our power grid and put the cost of living through the roof. If you're going to move it, you're going to have to fix up the roads to get them there.
At the speed they're going, they'll want to start pretty soon. Otherwise it's just not going to happen. We still haven't completed the Singleton Bypass.
They haven't really even started the Muswellbrook bypass. I opened the Scone Bypass, but that was some time ago. The other day, they were trying to move one of the batteries up.
They had three prime movers at the front, three prime movers at the back and a prime mover with the battery on it. I don't know what that does to the pavement or the road that it's moving along, but your pavement rehabilitation is also going to be massive. As a closing note, we used to have a program to fix up remote roads.
Even on my local road from Danglemah to Woolbrook—someone's going to get killed on that. It is just absolutely riveted out of control. So many people say it is just incredibly dangerous.
These are roads that no-one even sees, but they're nonetheless roads people use.