PAT CONROY, MEMBER FOR SHORTLAND: I’m Pat Conroy, the Federal Member for Shortland, and I am here on Elizabeth Parade with Adam Shultz, Mayor of Lake Macquarie City Council. Residents talk to me all the time about the need for all levels of government to work together more effectively. They don’t care who solves it, but they want governments to work together to solve their challenges, and one of the most common ones is the state of roads and footpaths in our community.
We’re a growing community and people want quality of life, and that’s why I’m delighted to announce today with Adam Shultz, Mayor of Lake Macquarie City Council a 75 per cent increase in federal funding for Lake Macquarie City Council from the Roads to Recovery Program. That means over the next five years, over $15 million will be allocated to priority projects for Lake Macquarie City Council. That means more money to fix up roads, more money for footpaths, more money for drainage, and that means better quality of life for people in our community.
We’re standing here on Elizabeth Parade, and you just have to look around to see the need for repairs to this road and better drainage. And the Albanese Labor Government can only provide this very significant increase in funding because we’re managing the Budget well. We’ve delivered two Budget surpluses in a row for the first time in almost 20 years, and that means we can increase our road funding to Lake Mac Council by 75 per cent. So this another great example of the Albanese Labor Government working well with local government and delivering the priorities that ratepayers expect.
I’ll hand over to Adam and then we’d be delighted to answer some questions.
CR ADAM SHULTZ, MAYOR OF LAKE MACQUARIE CITY COUNCIL: Thank you, Pat. It’s great to be here with you in Elizabeth Parade, Charlestown. At Council, we’ve got more than 1,300km of road to maintain. The Roads to Recovery funding that the Federal Government has announced, $15.4 million, here in Elizabeth Parade it’s a $3.7 million spend, a portion of which is through the Roads to Recovery funding. We’ve also got a $1.9 million project scheduled for Dora Creek in Gardiner Road over there, but as Pat said, over the next five years, this funding that the Federal Government have provided will be able to be prioritised for roads that need to be rehabilitated.
Here in Elizabeth Parade, we’ve got road rehabilitation, we’ve got new drainage, and we’ve got beautiful new footpaths. So there’s a lot of work to be done, but yeah it’s great to be working hand in hand with the Federal Government, and we’re very appreciative. I guess we’ll go to questions.
REPORTER: Yeah with the amount of roads that are here and also lots of areas around your electorate, I mean it’s a very big job for Councils to keep ahead of it, so I suppose the Federal Government and the State Government I suppose and the Council itself can, you know, put in some extra funds to do that.
CONROY: Well I’ll invite Adam to respond to that as well, but this is an example of the Federal Government working with the other levels of government. We saw that earlier this week with the dredge announcement which brought all three levels of government together to work to solve a local challenge. Prime Minister Albanese is passionate about local government. He used to be Minister for Local Government, and he always insists that we focus on supporting local government which is the level of government closest to the people, and that’s why us providing more financial resources means a better quality of life for people in our community.
REPORTER: Yes so Adam, how much strain is there on the Council to keep up with all of these roads and footpaths?
SHULTZ: Yeah absolutely, there’s more than 1,300km of local roads right across Lake Macquarie. If you look at our balance sheet, the roads, our local roads is affectively our biggest asset which is in excess of $3 billion. If you think an asset, you normally think of something that you can actually leverage going forward. Obviously local roads are fundamental to life here in Lake Macquarie because people use their cars. They also want their kids to be able to ride their bikes, so to be able to put in new footpaths and rehabilitate roads like this one here at Elizabeth Parade is really, really important.
REPORTER: Also I suppose actually getting, you know not that necessarily you want (inaudible) to be in cars or in bikes, but you look at roads like this and you think would you be game to ride a bicycle if you’re doing a commute to work or as an alternative to using cars. So I mean that is not just for children, it’s actually making it a lot more important for people who want to use alternative means of transport.
SHULTZ: Yeah absolutely. So here in Elizabeth Parade, we’re hoping that this road will be completed in time for Christmas, but yeah right across the city we want to encourage more public transport, so as Pat said working obviously across levels of government. Local government isn’t responsible for public transport, that’s the state government, so yeah it’s being a conduit between the federal, the state, and the local to make sure that we’re all singing from the same song sheet and we’re delivering for the community. But as you said, yeah people need multiple modes of transport. We’ve got the trainline on the western side of the lake which is underutilised in my opinion and has been for quite some time, so Council is mindful of that, and you know that’s part of having a housing forum early next year to see how we can try and encourage development in and around that existing rail infrastructure.
REPORTER: I guess just what’s left to do on this road before Christmas as you say and what will the disruption be like to local commuters?
SHULTZ: Yeah there will be disruption. As you can see at the moment, we’re halfway through the process, but good things take time and I think if you’re living on Elizabeth Parade in Charlestown, then you’re pretty stoked that you’re going to be getting a new footpath, a new rehabilitated road, improved drainage as well, so there’s a lot to look forward to for the people of this street, but not just this street, but streets across the city. As Pat said, $15.4 million of extra funding is going to flow to the Lake Macquarie City Council, and we’re looking forward to spending that appropriately in those areas that we need to prioritise.
REPORTER: So Adam, have you identified any other areas or other streets that are a priority? Where to next (inaudible)?
SHULTZ: Yeah so Dora Creek – Gardiner Road in Dora Creek is a $1.9 million spend. We’ve also got our asset replacement reserve so, you know, in terms of that $3 billion in roads, it’s important to, you know, depreciate them, so we try and cash fund depreciation to try and ensure we’ve got a pool of funds whereby where roads come to the end of their useful life, we’ve got funds ready to go. But complimenting that is this Roads to Recovery funding, and that’s how we will be looking to spend it.
CONROY: And if I could – just to supplement, this is a key point of this program and the approach of the Albanese Labor Government. We respond to the priorities of the Council, so we don’t tie the funding to a specific road. This is – Council is in the best position to decide which roads need assistance and repair soonest, and so we allocate the money and then we expect them to do their job as good councils do and allocate that funding fairly and appropriately and transparently. And this is one of the things I love about Lake Macquarie City Council is that it’s a council that knows that you do the basics first. People expect good roads, they expect their garbage to be picked up on time, they expect all that before you look at other things that can improve the quality of life, but you’ve got to get the basics right for ratepayers, and Lake Macquarie City Council does that.
REPORTER: Just one more question on another issue, Pat. Overnight we had a 4.1 magnitude quake out at Muswellbrook. We’ve had a series of quakes but this has got to be one of the worst that we’ve seen, leaving people quite rattled. Obviously the Coalition is planning to put nuclear out there at Liddell. Just remind me of your government’s stance on that?
CONROY: Well I think the earthquake overnight just demonstrated again that Peter Dutton is absolutely crazy if he thinks our community wants nuclear fired electricity. Like, it’s much more expensive than other options, and quite frankly, putting it in a seismically unstable zone such as the Upper Hunter is absolutely crazy. There’s no other word for it. My community doesn’t want it. It’s a recipe for community unrest, it’s a recipe for higher power prices, and Australians want lower power prices and that’s what the Albanese Labor Government is focused on. Peter Dutton is obsessed, he’s got ideological obsessions, whether it’s on nuclear power or culture wars, whereas everyday Australians want lower power prices, they want help with cost of living, they want more investment in housing, not more expensive power in areas that quite frankly are unsafe.
REPORTER: Well we’ll have to ask him but from what you’re hearing, is he taking these repeated earthquakes seriously and actually rethinking that site?
CONROY: No. He’s clearly out of touch with what our community wants. I haven’t met a single person here in my street stalls, in my door knocking who, once you explain the facts, accepts that this is a good idea. It’s a bad idea. We’ve had a number of earthquakes in the Upper Hunter, to put a nuclear power station there is just crazy. It costs money, it means higher power prices, so Peter Dutton needs to listen to the people of our community and reverse his policy and support lowering power prices, not increasing them.
REPORTER: Adam I was just going to ask you, you mentioned about the trainline and that. Have you got any strategies to encourage people to use the trainline a bit more regularly?
SHULTZ: So the TODS, the Transit Orientated Developments, they came out from the State Government last year in terms of urban density in and around Morisset, Cockle Creek, Teralba, Cardiff as well. In terms of having this housing forum, we want to get stakeholders together, so that being developers, local housing community providers, community groups, key politicians – I am sure Pat will be in attendance – to try and differentiate Lake Macquarie from all of the other 127 LGAs around the state. There’s a lot of work to do. We’re in a housing crisis. In terms of what local government can do is try and increase supply, so that will be front of mind when we meet early next year. But yeah, it’s about trying to increase supply, doing it strategically in and around those transport hubs, and just staring into the reality that if we don’t increase supply, you know, kids aren’t going to be able to afford property in Lake Macquarie, and that’s not something that I think any level of government wants to become a reality.