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  • Labor's fatal Pacific Highway breakdown

    12/05/11

    “PROVING Labor has been asleep at the wheel, the 2011 federal budget has ended any chance of completing the duplication of the Pacific Highway between Sydney and the Queensland border by 2016,” Leader of The Nationals and Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Minister Warren Truss said today.

    “The project is now several billion dollars short of the funds needed to meet Labor’s promised 2016 completion date.

    “Minister Albanese’s grandiose budget night claim to be providing an extra $1 billion for the duplication of the Pacific Highway in NSW is a fraud. It sounds great until you analyse the detail.

    “There is NO NEW MONEY. The billion is made up of $700 million in funds previously committed to the highway and $270 million siphoned from other projects in NSW.

    “Even worse, Minister Albanese conceded in his media release, that not one centimeter of bitumen will be laid with this funding – instead, the $1 billion is earmarked for ‘detailed planning’ only. If any road building is to actually take place, Mr Albanese says the money will have to come from the incoming NSW Coalition government.

    “It means that any hope of the government keeping its repeated promise of completing the duplication by 2016 has been dashed. No duplication just more duplicity from this Labor government.

    “After four years, Labor’s much-touted upgrade – to make the highway dual carriage way for the whole of the 821kms by 2016 – promised before, and repeatedly since, the 2007 federal election, now cannot be completed on time.”

    The upgrade was top-of-mind for Independent MP Rob Oakeshott in seeking assurances from the Prime Minister during Question Time on 21 October 2010 of its timely completion. To which Ms Gillard responded:

    ‘I can very much commit to him that the Government is committed to duplicating the Pacific Highway by 2016’.

    “That commitment is now a smouldering wreck. A complete write-off,” Mr Truss said.

    “The Pacific Highway project has been on the skids ever since the NRMA’s analysis revealed that the initial $3.6 billion allocated for the duplication – $3.1 billion from the federal government and $500 million from the NSW government – was under-funded by half!

    “In a politically punitive twist in the road, the Rudd-Gillard Government let its NSW Labor mates off the hook for their 50/50 share – effectively halving available funds. Now, with a Coalition Government installed by the people of NSW, Mr Albanese is demanding it contribute to the national highway.

    “Labor has consigned the Pacific Highway upgrade to its growing tally of overcooked, undelivered promises and is now looking to make the new NSW government its scapegoat.

    “This year’s budget has seen federal Labor fail to make up the funding shortfall it created to keep the project on schedule. And with such a massive gap between existing funding and the funding required, you’d have to ask yourself how we will ever see it completed.”
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