Thursday, 1 August 2024

Berwick electorate infrastructure

Brad BATTIN (Berwick) (17:22): (755) My adjournment matter is for the Premier. The action I would like to ask for from the Premier is for her to do some karaoke with me out in the Berwick electorate. We could drive around some of the areas down there and have a look at what the concerns are on the roads throughout the south-east. I thought it would be a great opportunity for us to start our morning out on Orana estate and get in the car with one of the families down there who have to take their kids to school and currently cannot go down the very short road which would go straight to the new school down in Clyde North. They have to go out on Pattersons Road, along Clyde Road, back down Thompsons Road, taking about 35 to 40 minutes.

Pauline Richards interjected.

Brad BATTIN: I note the member for Cranbourne goes, ‘Great school.’ I am not questioning the great school, but 40 minutes to get to the school, 30 minutes to get home and having to repeat that in the afternoon – that is over 2 hours out of the day for each of those parents picking up and dropping off their students.

Or maybe the Premier could get in the car and join me for a drive along Bells Road. Bells Road is in an area in Clyde North that is really important. It is a really important road – a connector road that this government has failed to deliver. The reason this one is important is because we have got a letter from the Minister for Transport Infrastructure to state that this road is open. When you visit the road, you cannot drive on it, you cannot walk on it, you cannot have any traffic lights at it, you cannot build on it and there are no lines on it. In actual fact they have just put the gutters on it. So for the minister to say it is already open is actually just misleading my community.

We could go from there for a drive all the way up to the Thompsons Road intersection roundabout. I know the member for Cranbourne would love the roundabout down there – the roundabout where you have to work out about 5 kilometres before getting to it which lane you want to be in so you can turn left or right. The safety issues at this roundabout have been raised for a long period of time. What is worse is the funding that is in the budget for this is to not actually do this project for about four years. So we have got about four years before the project is going to be done. Maybe start some planning down there. Whilst we are driving around we can go down Matterhorn Drive. When you are in the Matterhorn area you can go past –

Jess Wilson interjected.

Brad BATTIN: I would love to go into the songs, but I am not that good at the history of songs, I will be honest. But we could drive down and we could say, yes, there might be an ambulance station, but a police station has not been built – a police station that was promised in 2018. It was an absolute and utter furphy from this government that they were going to deliver that. It has not been delivered, and crime continues to increase. It should be where the fire station was. We have had a number of houses that burnt and there was damage through those houses, and we could not get the fire brigade to respond from the new FRV station, because this government has failed to deliver it.

The south-east communities deserve better. What they do not deserve is a Premier who is sitting in a car singing, driving on a road in inner Melbourne, rather than investing in the communities that desperately need it. They have continued to take the taxes off these people, but they cannot put in place the items to protect them in their homes, to protect them in their streets and to make sure the infrastructure is delivered.