Thursday, 24 March 2022

Adjournment

Swan Hill bridge

Mr WALSH (Murray Plains) (17:01): (6296) My adjournment matter tonight is for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, and it concerns the proposed new bridge in Swan Hill.

Ms Allan: New bridge in Swan Hill?

Mr WALSH: The new bridge in Swan Hill.

Ms Allan: A new bridge.

Mr WALSH: The new bridge. The people of the wider Swan Hill district, including the current Swan Hill Rural City Council, are extremely concerned that after more than 40 years of campaigning, pleading and fighting for a new bridge and with $60 million in funding being allocated by the federal government three years ago the project has stalled. There is some urgency with this issue, and the action I seek from the minister is that he receive a delegation with me—the mayor of Swan Hill rural city, Jade Benham, and the two councillors, Bill Moar and Les McPhee, who were both previous mayors—at the next sitting week, so that they can come down and they can meet with the minister and actually brief him on the concerns that they have on how this project has stalled.

The Swan Hill new bridge is a project that is now managed by Transport for New South Wales. It was previously managed by the Department of Transport here in Victoria. Option 9A was chosen a number of years ago. That has now been scrapped, and a new alignment, the McCallum Street option, has been approved by both councils on each side of the river, the Murray River Council and the Swan Hill Rural City Council. The two road authorities have agreed to that alignment. Nearly $6 million of the $60 million from the federal government has been drawn down to do some preliminary designs and to do the business case for the bridge, but because of some restructures that are happening in the transport department in Victoria, the Swan Hill Rural City Council is very concerned that there is no-one to talk to to actually progress the issue and make sure there is good dialogue going on with the New South Wales department of transport to progress this particular issue.

And there is also an overlaying issue around the heritage of the bridge, in that it is heritage listed. Heritage New South Wales had agreed to shift the heritage listing from the Swan Hill bridge to the Tooleybuc Bridge, which is a bridge of similar construction with Allan trusses on it—he was the engineer that built those bridges 150 years ago. The small part of the bridge that is on the Victorian land, the abutment on the Victorian side, is actually listed by Heritage Victoria. Heritage Victoria is being difficult about actually having that heritage value transferred, and I seek an opportunity to talk to the minister about that.