The Beagle Editor,
Lobbying for Princes Highway improvements in the Eurobodalla Shire began many years ago. In the mid 1990’s a councillor raised the matter at a council meeting. Carolyn Geppert the editor of the Bay Post and Eric Wiseman editor of the Moruya Examiner often included articles in the Local papers. Russell Smith the local state member and Gary Nairn the Federal Member were well aware of the importance of the Princes Highway to the area's populations in those days. Carl Scully, a minister for roads in the government around that time was as well. The state government for many years developed excuses for doing very little with the Princes Highway in the Eurobodalla region even to the point of dismantling the RTA roads maintenance depot in the area. Local Public Servants were virtually useless in the lobbying process, happy to leave things as they were, afraid of additional, potential financial maintenance obligations if the Princes Highway was upgraded and duplicated in the Eurobodalla Shire. Town By– passes were not in their vocabulary or long term vision supporting a growing area. Suggestions thirty years ago were even made to have the Princes Highway re categorised to a Highway of National Significance making it more of a Federal Government financial responsibility.
All the recent promises of taxpayers money to duplicate the Princes Highway though to the Victorian border including the recent announcement of a by-pass of Moruya will very likely be years before and physical works begin. Plans need to be drawn and land acquisitions will be required too. The present Local Member has known of the need to do something ever since becoming the Local Member several years and terms of Government ago. And who will set the priorities of work and budgets? Will it be the Director of Southern Region RMS working within the overarching RMS Strategy that has been guided by safety and facility or will it be driven by vote-getting politicians applying knee jerk rulings that result in follies such as the Batemans Bay Bridge that most certainly will not take us into the next eighty years of regional development and growth due to its inevitable impact on the Batemans Bay CBD.
Allan Brown
Catalina
A clear message - TeenSafe's Fix the Bloody Highway campaign
