Mentioned in parliament
Ferry Road has been getting a bit of a run in the House of Assembly lately. On 22 June 2010, Will Hodgman, the Leader of the Opposition said:
What about Labor’s $90 million election promise of work to upgrade 16 roads across the State? There are no specific allocations in this Budget for funding to upgrade these roads. Of course Labor is now saying that it will need to get business case approval for each road first. That is not what you told the people of Tasmania when you made them that promise during the election campaign. So now many communities right across Tasmania are unsure as to whether or not they will even see these upgrades. The Tasmanians who use Ferry Road at Kettering or the Arthur Highway or the Tasman Highway or the Highland Lakes Road, will continue to drive on roads that Mr Bartlett said just three months ago needed urgent upgrading.
Liberal Member for Franklin, Jacquie Petrusma has also been putting the acid on the government and submitted a Notice of Motion on 23 June 2010 and in a speech to parliament on 24 June even made reference to this humble website:
I rise today to speak on the budget reply. . . . In regard to my own electorate of Franklin, it is disappointing to see that roads have been the victim of this Budget. The standard of the roads, especially in the Huon Valley, leaves much to be desired. They lack overtaking lanes, have icy and unsafe road conditions, and verges and lines of sight are blocked through overgrowth. Once again, the Liberals’ alternative budget shows that we would have delivered 100 per cent on our road commitments. Labor, on the other hand, made pre-election promises to fix Ferry Road at Kettering; the Huon Highway, including overtaking lanes for safety improvements; the Richmond heavy vehicle link road and Rokeby main road. However, this promise has now been shown as too good to be true . . . I now quote from the Fix Ferry Road web site: ‘If they are all equal priority then that means a tad less than $100 000 each Roughly equivalent to what DIER ARE spending annually to pump out the sewerage tank at the Bruny Island Ferry terminal and probably about as useful in terms of actually getting something done. How many consultants can you buy for $100 000 these days?’
The FixFerry Road web site also states: ‘All we ever get, apart from impressive-sounding election promises, is that there is a substantial amount of planning to be done before work can commence. That was certainly the line that we got from Graeme Sturges and now it looks like Lara Giddings and Michael Aird are singing from the same song sheet Sturgo used. If only someone from DIER would actually contact the community to at least provide us with a progress report or put us out of our misery.’
And today, Liberals shadow minister for Infrastructure, Rene Hidding issued a media release entitled Regional roads funding not guaranteed which says:
In Estimates today, Lara Giddings admitted that Labor’s $90 million funding for regional roads was not in the Budget.
Instead, there was an unallocated pool of infrastructure funding that would be used to fund infrastructure for a number of government departments.
The Labor Party made a commitment at the election to fund up to 16 regional roads, yet none of the roads mentioned at election are guaranteed any funding at all.
Instead, the Labor Party intends to use the unallocated money like a magic pudding. Whenever they are asked about infrastructure funding they will point to the unallocated amount and say that it could be funded.
As we’ve seen with the Urban Heritage and Renewal Fund, whenever the Labor Party has a large bucket of unallocated money, it tends to be spent inefficiently and generally in areas of Tasmania where the Labor vote is flagging.
That’s not the way to run a budget and Tasmanians can well be concerned that not all of the 16 roads mentioned in the election will be funded and that the unallocated infrastructure funding will not be spent efficiently and effectively.
Minister for Infrastructure, Lara Giddings, had the following to say in amongst other things in her media release:
In the leadup to the Federal Election, I expect funding for major infrastructure projects to form a significant part of both major parties’ election commitments.
Ms Giddings said the State Government was committed to meeting all of its transport infrastructure election commitments, including the Community Roads Package and the West Coast Roads Package.
These two important roads packages will deliver a number of road improvements across the State to provide a safer traveling environment for all road users.
Through a planning and scoping fund of up to $12.5 million over the next four years, we will immediately begin planning work on road projects as identified through these two initiatives.
Aaah – the old pre-election promise trick – we remember it well.
