The proposed store at Bomaderry should only have been approved upon the guarantee of the closing of the original Nowra CBD store.

Premier Mike Baird is running the state like a corporate boardroom – Tea Party politics.

The WestConnex is a typical example.  

WCX M4 Pty Ltd will be responsible for design, building and maintaining the motorway. Sydney Motorway Corporation Pty Ltd (the parent company) will collect tolls.

Even though it may only take five or six years to build, Sydney Motorways Corporation has a licence to collect tolls for 43 years.

Toll road companies are expected to make billions of dollars for investors – including governments.

What is the government’s involvement? The government is responsible for setting toll fees not only for the WCX but any other road within the state.

With this in mind the Princes Highway has had a name change – the Princes Motorway. Seems ominous, doesn’t it? The Baird government can set a toll on any section of the motorway between Sydney and the Victorian boarder.   

 “Click, click” – a $10 toll between Berry and Nowra with no way to avoid it.

Well there is always public transport – oh, I forgot, there isn’t any.

Listening to local radio recently, I heard the Member for South Coast refer to the imminent re-installation of a camera at the intersection of the Princes Highway and Island Point Road at Tomerong in order to track traffic accidents and near misses.

In the MP’s comments I sensed frustration on her part that we as a community seem to have been treated as second-class citizens again by the powers that be in Sydney and that more practical and meaningful measures to directly and comprehensively address the roads crisis in the region (as evidenced by this one extremely prominent example) was not occurring.

At this lethal intersection, a running sore for decades, we are seeing the reintroduction of technology installed years ago and then removed which only records the wrong-doers after the fact and does little to directly prevent these tragic accidents. It’s state authorities (often faceless bureaucrats with little direct experience of Shoalhaven road conditions) aren’t interested in tackling the real causes of the problem, but are merely wanting to be seen to be doing something to stave off complaints from local residents.

This is indicative of the general attitude of decision-makers at all levels of government to regional road issues and something that requires a whole-of-community response in order to remedy.

While funding increases to local roads in the recent state budget and on the federal campaign trail are to be welcomed, the rivers of grant money can’t be relied upon forever in a post-mining boom world.

It is up to local communities to start working towards developing their own planning and spending priorities to take to their MPs and councillors, so that the stretched tax-payer dollar is spent where it is actually needed and in the most efficient way possible.

Council too needs to work closely with state and federal authorities as the level of government closest to the people affected by these issues and prove it can be trusted to act in a meaningful and visionary way in doing all it can to make this particular stretch of road – and others across the city – as safe as it possibly can be.