Tuesday, 6 February 2024

Adjournment

Western Highway duplication

Emma KEALY (Lowan) (19:00): (491) It is wonderful to be back in the new year. I have an adjournment matter for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, and the action I seek is an allocation of funding to complete the long-awaited duplication of the Western Highway. Can you believe that planning for duplication of the Western Highway commenced in 2008? When I was a humble candidate back in 2014 there was a very, very strong campaign all around securing an election commitment to funding the Western Highway duplication through to Stawell. The slogan at that time was the ingenious ‘Don’t stall at Stawell’. In fact they wanted to go right through to the border. Now here we are in 2024 and section 2B of the Western Highway duplication, Buangor to Ararat, has still not received an allocation from the state government – this section was supposed to be finished well before 2016 – and section 3, which is Ararat through to Stawell, including a bypass of Great Western, has still not been funded by the state government. We are so far behind where we should be in terms of allocation of funding that the whole project has derailed, stalled in fact.

The reason that I am raising this is that we have got a budget coming up, but more than that, we have got an incredibly dangerous situation on our roadways, particularly along the Western Highway. Yet again on the weekend we had an accident in Great Western. A year ago we had a terrible fatality, a paramedic was killed on the roads. We have had many other accidents and fatalities over the past 10 years. We have had terrible injuries along that section of road. If there is a loss of life or an injury, then this is something that should be of the utmost priority to the government.

This has passed every single test. It has passed review. We understand that the cultural heritage planning has now been completed. The business case has been revised and completed. There is nothing left to be done on the Western Highway duplication apart from the Treasurer, in May, standing up and including an allocation of funding for the Western Highway duplication through to Stawell in the budget papers this year.

This is an important roadway. It is the second heaviest trafficked highway in Australia. There are 2000 trucks that travel on that road a day, 7000 vehicles a day – this doubles over Easter of course to the Stawell region, which is a fantastic place to go over Easter if you have nothing else on. We have got the Stawell Gift. We have got the races as well, or in May we also have the lovely Grampians Grape Escape. I urge the Minister for Roads and Road Safety to allocate funding for this important road project.