THE Albanese Government is putting lives at risk on our local roads because of stalled safety projects and a failure to deliver the funding our communities have been promised.
Halfway through the Albanese Government’s term, local council and community groups have no idea if vital road safety and infrastructure projects will ever proceed, thanks to an incompetent Minister.
The Minister for Infrastructure and Trans- port Catherine King has been a huge disappointment for local councils which rely heavily on Federal Government grants to help fund major projects.
If you see a grader, a bulldozer, or a crane at work on a major public project anywhere in Australia today, you can be sure of one thing, the current Federal Minister had absolutely nothing to do with providing the funding.
Should we be surprised about this failure to deliver any new projects given this year’s budget speech didn’t contain a single mention of the word ‘infrastructure’?
Instead of guaranteeing funding for projects, Minister King announced a 90-day review of the Infrastructure Investment Program but conveniently excluded all Labor election promises from the process.
More than 150 days later, we still haven’t heard the outcomes of the review and communities are waiting to find out whether the funding which was promised, and included in the previous government’s budgets, will ever be delivered.
Nothing is getting cheaper by waiting, and when the Minister finally makes some decisions, there’s no doubt that local council community projects will need to be re-scoped, and less road safety initiatives will be undertaken.
So we are in limbo as Australia experiences a spike in road trauma, and motorists endure pot-holed roads, while the responsible Federal Minister ponders her review.
Darren Chester, Shadow Minister for Regional Development Shadow Minister for Local Government and Territories. Federal Member for Gippsland.
