FRAN BAILEY (1:42 PM) —For almost the past half hour, we have been listening to the honourable member for Batman. I was listening very carefully to what he said. In that entire half hour, I did not hear one positive response from him to probably the largest and best road funding package for local roads right throughout this country that we have seen in decades. Possibly it is the largest road funding package ever. I am pretty sure that I wrote down very carefully exactly what the honourable member for Batman said. This legislation provides $1.6 billion for road funding, $1.2 billion of which is going to local roads right across our country. He referred to that as an `unfair, shabby legislative effort'. He went on to say that this was pork-barrellingthat there were more coalition seats receiving funding than Labor Party seats. The fact is that there more of us representing very large areas of regional Australia.

The member for Batman also said that nothing had been done for rail. He very carefully chose to omit the diesel fuel rebate. He asked: where are the government's priorities on roads? He had half an hour in which to concentrate on that because the priority is with this Roads to Recovery legislation, which represents a 75 per cent increase to local road funding from the Commonwealth. The government is actually showing that. We have 148 members of this House representing every community across our nation. I am sure that each and every one of the 148 of us who represent all of those communities have at some stage received representation about the state of local roads in our electorates. Presumably, there may be an exception to that because the member for Batman does not seem to know much about the need for local roads and how excellent a package this is for local road funding.

Many of the representations that we have all received have come from people concerned about the safety of a local road, concerned that one of their local roads is so bad that a local school bus cannot travel down it. Just recently, I was at the Ruffy Primary School in my electorate and parents with children at that school were concerned that Boat Hole Road, a crucial link in the school bus route, was unsafe for the school bus to travel on. This is just one small example, but a very important example, of how the current state of local roads affects the daily lives of people. I am going to refer to other examples a little later on if I have time, but that example is an important reason for just why this $1.6 billion Roads to Recovery funding program is so important not just to my electorate of McEwen but right across our whole nation.

This $1.6 billion funding is vitally important both for social and economic reasons. ABS data shows that the average age of Australian roads has increased from 16.3 years in 1983-84 to 18.6 years in 1995-96 and growing older. I might add that during that period those opposite never produced a package of road funding like this one to deal with the problems of the ageing road infrastructure. These figures that I have given are an average and I, like most members of this House, can readily identify many roads that are much older than the average and in fact are at the very end of their lifespan. They have been allowed to age and deteriorate because there has been a massive underinvestment in local roads for at least the past decade, largely because the states have abrogated their responsibility and because local governments simply have not had access to the level of funding needed to maintain the vast network of local roads and to keep them in good repair. This has had serious implications for communities because it is roads that link people with goods and services for work, for everyday essentials, for health, for education and for social and recreational purposes.

In the report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Primary Industries and Regional Services on rural and regional infrastructure, which I chaired, evidence was provided that poor roads increase the running costs of vehicles, length and travel time; influence the quality of goods being transported over them usually to our ports and airports; restrict access by tourists—and for those of us in regional areas, increasingly tourism is a very important and growing industry, and it is these local roads which are impinging on the development of tourism in many areas—and reduce access for local communities to supplies and services. So many of them are simply unsafe. I must mention here that the report I just mentioned made recommendations to government about the need to increase funding for roads. So as well as speaking here in this debate as the representative of my electorate of McEwen, I am also pleased with this road funding package on behalf of my committee.

The benefits of road funding to generating employment in regions and assisting in the growth of industry are substantial. I want to refer to, and quote from, the report that I have just spoken about. A number of studies have been conducted over recent years both here in Australia and overseas and they have all established a very clear connection between judiciously targeted investment in roads and economic development. In their submission, the Australian Automobile Association summarised some of the findings from these studies. They said:

They said that for every one per cent increase in investment in road infrastructure there occurs at the same time a corresponding increase in private sector output. Their study also said:

The Automobile Association also pointed out that the returns from investing in roads are higher than those for most other types of economic and social infrastructure. This means in real terms that new jobs will be created in my electorate throughout the shires of Delatite, Murrindindi, Mitchell, Strathbogie, Yarra Ranges, Whittlesea, Hume and Nillumbik. Conversely, it has also been documented that the benefits of industry and employment growth are lost without spending on road infrastructure. I want to give you just a quick example from my own electorate. The Shire of Delatite made a submission to our committee's inquiry and were talking about the expanding timber industry. They said:

There of course we are talking about jobs. This legislation, by providing $1.2 billion for local roads, will ensure that these benefits for industry and employment are captured but are captured importantly for our local region. I realise that I have got very little time left in this debate in order to let everyone have a say, so I will just mention very briefly two areas—the Tolmie Bridge in the Delatite shire and Kirwans Bridge in the shire of Strathbogie. The lack of investment in road infrastructure there has actually meant that people living in these communities have extremely poor access. The road conditions are hazardous, and it poses an emergency risk in many cases.

In stark contrast to the reaction that we heard here by the member for Batman, I have contacted every one of my shires, and I can tell you they are absolutely ecstatic about this. This morning I did a radio interview at Alexandra and spoke to the CEO of the Shire of Murrindindi, who cannot wait for the money to flow. So when the member for Batman asks: what is the need for the urgency to get this legislation through the parliament? The answer to that question is that we want to get the funding through to local government as quickly as possible so that they can start on this massive job of repairing these local roads and bringing them up to scratch. I would love to talk in this debate for much longer, but I know that my time has run out. So I will simply say in conclusion: I thoroughly commend this legislation to the House on behalf of all of the people I represent in my electorate of McEwen.