There was something odd at about a media release that came from the office of Gilmore MP Ann Sudmalis on Monday, October 17. The release concerned calls for federal highway funding from state MP Gareth Ward. Coming quite of the blue, it asserted the state government had not identified the highway upgrade as an infrastructure priority. Until it did so, Mrs Sudmalis said, she could not press Canberra for funds.
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Guaranteed to get Mr Ward even further offside was a comparison between current calls for federal road funding and those of former Labor Kiama MP Matt Brown.
The release came the day after a meeting of the local Liberal Party Federal Electorate Council at Worrigee House. At this meeting Mr Ward and staunch Sudmalis ally Joanna Gash exchanged words over Mr Ward’s support in the local government election for candidates whose preferences went to the Greens, helping to secure the election of Amanda Findley as Shoalhaven Mayor.
A whiff of internal party shenanigans maybe but what was really off-colour about Mrs Sudmalis’s assertion was revealed in a letter from Mr Ward to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull that came a few days later. In his plea for federal funding, the Kiama MP refuted Mrs Sudmalis’s claim the highway upgrade was not identified as an infrastructure priority. He said the replacement of the Shoalhaven River bridge had been identified in a submission to the federal government in September last year.
Obviously, a replacement bridge is an essential and very expensive component of the highway upgrade, which possibly visible from space as it progresses from Toolijooa Road to Berry is clearly an infrastructure priority for the NSW government. The $10 million in federal money for planning the bridge is a drop in the ocean.
The time for using the Princes Highway as a political football bounced between Macquarie Street is over. The terrific progress made on the upgrade should not be stalled because of petty differences between politicians who might be from the same party but are clearly poles apart.
Motorists saw great achievements in terms of federal highway funding when Joanna Gash was the MP for Gilmore. The Kiama bypass and the Conjola Mountain upgrade both had help from Canberra at a time there was a Labor government in NSW.
They have every right to expect even better co-operation when both state and federal governments are run by the same party.