Experts have warned the federal government’s pledge to seal the 2,720km Outback Way may not be the best approach for ensuring the project’s success, saying the Coalition is “jumping the gun” ahead of the election, while remote communities have welcomed the promised development.
With a federal election expected in May, the infrastructure minister, Barnaby Joyce announced $678m for tarring 1,000km of the roads connecting Laverton in southern Western Australia to Winton in Queensland, known collectively as the Outback Way.
It came a day after Anthony Albanese promised a $200m roads package for the Northern Territory if it wins the election.
The federal government has previously committed $330m to upgrade the route as well as a more recent $42m federal injection for upgrades along the Eyre highway, the Stuart highway from north of Coober Pedy and the Barrier highway from Burra to Cockburn.
Director of the Grattan Institute’s transport and cities program, Marion Terrill, says the government is “jumping the gun” and should not be making promises with public money when they don’t understand the nature of the problem or the solution.
“You don’t start with a bucket of money and spray it around,” she said.
Terrill said her research had shown that prematurely announced projects are not only more prone to cost overrun but can also continue to be problematic.
As a result, she said “the people who will benefit from this, perhaps could have benefited more from something else if careful study had been done or Infrastructure Australia had been allowed to complete its analysis”.
Infrastructure Australia, the body established to advise governments of infrastructure priorities to which Joyce appointed Col Murray as chair earlier last year, said it had “not received a business case for the sealing of Outback Way.”
The mayor of Boulia shire council along the Outback Way, Rick Britton, welcomed the announcement, which he says allowed the project to go “from a pipe dream to now a reality”.
“As far as we’re concerned in a remote rural area you have to have a road corridor first and then you can build things around that. It’s a bit like a chicken and an egg,” he said.
“For someone to come and stay in our community, they have to be able to leave in any given time or weather. A sealed road will give that connectivity.”
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, said the upgrades would support 2,197 jobs, and deliver an important economic boost across Australia’s centre.
Britton affirmed a road crew from his shire would be employed, and the sealed roads would bring an increase in traffic that would bolster other industries.
“If you own a local hotel or roadhouse or have a business in tyre or service providers, it makes your business sustainable and you can invest in it and ramp your business up,” Britton said.
He said it would open up greater tourism opportunities for communities all along the Outback Way.
Britton also said he believed the announcement came as an acknowledgment of the GDP that rural and remote Australia brings to the nation.
Gillian Fennell, who runs beef cattle in remote SA says it’s good to have the government acknowledge the need for investment in regional transport networks.
“We need to be building a transport network that is connected with a proper genuine network, not just small amounts of bitumen to cross the outback. That all of our roads are of a certain standard and connected across Australia,” she said.
Fennell said inexperienced drivers, especially those with trailers or driving campervans, tip over with alarming regularity on the unsealed roads.
She said the discussions have been happening for the past 30 years about sealing the road, especially from Alice Springs through to Queensland but “to get a commitment for whatever it’s worth is exciting”.
But Fennell said phone reception remained an issue.
“If the government was going to do it really right, they’d put mobile phone towers to match the bitumen,” Fennell said.
