LAST Thursday’s roads forum in Taree was declared a success by its convenors, the Manning Valley Business Chamber.
Chamber executive officer Peter Lyne said the main objective of the forum was to inform the community about our roads infrastructure crisis – and to this end it was a success, with council’s executive leader service delivery Ron Posselt providing a comprehensive, and disturbing, overview.
Mr Lyne said the response by the politicians present was “reasonably good”.
However, he said there was some disappointment over the “non-committal” answers from some quarters.
More than 50 apologies were sent from local people who were unable to attend the forum because of the flooding. The politicians present, Myall Lakes MP, Stephen Bromhead, Lyne MP Rob Oakeshott;,and NSW shadow roads minister, Robert Furolo, as well as Greater Taree mayor Paul Hogan and council executives, took questions from the floor for almost an hour.
Peter Lyne said perhaps the best question of the day came from Wingham Beef Exports general manager Grant Coleman, who asked when we would receive the promised funding, and when we would receive funding in the future, neither of which were directly answered, Mr Lyne said.
MEMBER for Lyne, Rob Oakeshott called for Labor, Liberal and National Party MPs to back a campaign to redistribute GST revenue - an issue which he raised at Thursday’s roads forum.
Mr Oakeshott said the only way to address the nation’s local road network failures was to redirect some of the Commonwealth’s GST payments straight to local councils.
“I can already hear the state governments squealing that ‘it’s our money’. It’s my view that it’s the people’s money and it’s about time some of it was used on the national local road network.”
Mr Oakeshott also criticised the NSW government, saying it had failed to deliver the $19 million in natural disaster payments for road damage that occurred in June last year.
State Myall Lakes MP Stephen Bromhead also said on Monday, in a letter to the Manning River Times, that the natural disaster funding was based on the council’s claim and an assessment by officers from the Roads and Maritime Services (formerly the RTA).
Mr Bromhead said on this basis the RMS assessment is likely to be between $10 and $15 million (not $19 million) for the 400 plus projects submitted by council for the June 2011 flood.
“It is important that this (and all other) claim, question and assessment process is strictly followed as we are dealing with public funds which demands probity and good governance in its spending,” Mr Bromhead said.
There are three types of roads in Greater Taree: State roads - the Pacific Highway (75km); regional roads (102km); and local roads (1597km, 940km of which are unsealed). Of our 228 bridges, 38 are on roads classified regional and we have 3093 culverts and causeways.
During his presentation on Thursday at the forum, Mr Posselt clearly showed the disparity between State funding (through a variety of grants) some of which could only be used on regional roads and the remainder - with the summary that about 50 percent of the funds at council’s disposal had to be spent on regional roads and bridges and the rest on local roads (about 90 percent of our area).
This was common across councils throughout the State, Mr Posselt said, though most were at about 80 percent, compared with our 90 percent.
“So why are our roads cactus?” Mr Posselt asked, and went on to show some even more disturbing graphs which placed Greater Taree in the bottom quarter of the State when it comes to dollars per head of population available to be spent on roads infrastructure. Our area is listed in the worst category of roads, which is “failed” as opposed to “failing” - though we are not the worst. Those councils, Mr Posselt said, “well ... I can only pity them.”
Accounting estimates have determined that to simply keep up with the maintenance of our roads and bridges requires $27 million a year - every year, Mr Posselt said. Since Greater Taree has only between $7 to $10 million to spend, they are “going backwards” at the rate of $20 million a year and have been for quite some time.
This was the reason why everyone was “suddenly noticing” the poor condition of our roads across the board, Mr Posselt said, using the analogy of painting a wooden house.
If roads are resealed and maintained at regular intervals then they will keep to a good standard for some time, deteriorating slowly. If not, as is the case locally, they will deteriorate until they reach a tipping point where a major reconstruction is needed.
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