Minister for Regional Transport and Roads Sam Farraway yesterday dashed the hopes of regional motorists and cash strapped councils at Budget Estimates when he failed to give a deadline or final budget for the Nationals’ Regional Roads Transfer and Road Classification Review.
 

The Review was the Nationals’ key election commitment on regional roads at the 2019 election, proposing to transfer or reclassify 15,000 kilometres of local roads.
 

An interim report last year proposed the transfer of just 391 km of local roads and a reclassification of 353.7 km compared to the 15,000km that were promised in 2019.
 

Minister Farraway did not deny Shadow Treasurer Daniel Mookhey’s claim that at the current rate the process could take up to 145 years to complete. 
 

Shadow Minister for Regional Transport and Roads Jenny Aitchison said the Minister had failed regional people on the reclassification,
 

“The Minister confirmed the panel will not report until at least the third quarter of 2022, and he couldn’t give any information about how and when the allocated $250 million will be spent, what that would cover, or whether it would be enough.”
 

“The Minister refused to give councils across NSW any deadline or timeline.
 

“Given the Deputy Premier and former Minister took seven months to read the interim priority report, and this full report will be based on over 500 submissions, we still don’t know when the reclassifications and transfers will be approved, when they will actually take place, and if the government has even allocated enough to cover the cost.”
 

“This was a signature regional roads policy for the NSW Nationals at the last election. It should be the top priority of this Minister, and he should have been able to tell us a timeframe for when the program would be completed.”
 

Greg Warren, Shadow Minister for Local Government said,
 

“This has been nothing less than a debacle from the National / Liberal government. Communities need certainty in relation to their local road maintenance whilst ensuring local jobs are secured. What we don’t want to see is this government coming in and taking local roads, whilst also taking local jobs by contracting out the required ongoing maintenance and upgrades - we know that locals do it better and their jobs must be secured”.
 

THURSDAY, 17 MARCH 2022