Labor's Jenny Aitchison believes the state may have been spared some of the huge repair bill for flood damage if the state government had kept up with commitments to regional road upgrades.
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The member for Maitland - who used to be a Walcha-based bus company operator - travelled to Tamworth on Tuesday for the first time in her role as the shadow minister for regional transport and roads as part of a regional listening tour.
"The communities are hanging on those commitments, councils are hanging on those commitments, because the bill is going up and up and up. We look what's happened with the floods, you know, we're seeing a lot of damage to our roads," she said.
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"If the roads were in a better state before those events, then it would be interesting to see [what would have happened].
"You got out there and you see patch on patch on patch."
After her years in the bus operation industry, she believes she's already better-informed than most politicians about the problems affecting the transport sector.
Ms Aitchison said the number one issue with the government's current approach was simple: "not enough investment in infrastructure" in rural areas.
"You can't just let everyone leave Sydney and come out to the regions, and then they're not actually ever getting the infrastructure services they want," she said.
"Transport's a major social determinant health, education, opportunity and jobs. If you don't have those transport links properly working, if the roads are all congested, or dangerous, or impassible at different times, then that exacerbates the inequality of access for regional people."
She accused the state government of pork-barreling road expenditure into marginal or government-held seats in a way that left the transport network uncoordinated and disorganised.
As a result, programs like the plan to reclassify council-maintained roads as state to remove the financial burden from local government, have fallen behind schedule, she said.
Ms Aitchison will hold a public meeting at the Armidale Ex Services Memorial Club on Wednesday between 11.30am to 1.30pm.
Residents who can't attend the public meetings should call her electorate office to have their say on transport and road problems, she said.
The shadow minister was forced to cancel previous listening tours as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.