The letters section of today's
Coffs Coast Advocate has a letter about funding the Pacific Highway in the north of the state, especially to the north of Port Macquarie.
It's quite obvious the letter writer wants to bring matters associated with the highway to the attention of MPs, especially National Party MPs.
In a sensible move the writer chose to send the letter to the editor of the
Advocate who duly published it.
The other option the writer had was to send it directly to the National Party MPs on the NSW north coast, but that was a no-brainer; the recipients probably wouldn't be able to read it, understand it or be prepared to do anything about it, so they'd inevitably file it with much of the other correspondence they receive from their constituents in a section labelled "Too Hard".
Here's the letter:
Highway folly
It would appear North Coast members of parliament (state and federal) are afflicted by the mantra "It's someone else's fault".
The Pacific Hwy is not the national highway. Back in the '70s when the federal government took over the national highway it ran the circumference of Australia except for the New England due to the influence of the then leader of the Country (Nationals) Party, Ian Sinclair.
That folly has not been redressed but successive federal governments have accepted the need to fix the highway and entered into agreements with the state government.
Electorates to the north of Port Macquarie have always been the poor cousins and only received any semblance of largess to avoid embarrassment by the actions of our state neighbour to the north.
The NSW leader of the Nationals is quick to berate Canberra for perceived waste of funds on schemes for home insulation, NBN and the BER but utters not a peep about the extravagance of routing the Sapphire-to-Woolgoolga section through coastal swamp when a better route was available through the Nationals' heartland of the Orara Valley.
I have little time for Mr Oakeshott but it is hard to dismiss the observation that our Nationals members are found wanting with their views and attitudes to highway funding.
Independents in Canberra have shown how disproportionate funding achievements are possible when their support is needed; maybe it's time the Nationals exerted pressure on the Liberals instead of being Nodding Heads.
As a parting shot, I believe it is unconscionable to have our city drawn and quartered - east to west by the highway and north to south by the railway. Trucks are no less dangerous through Coffs Harbour than they are through Urunga. We haven't had our accident yet.
Peter Farquhar
Source: CCA, 7/3/12
