Upper Hunter Left Waiting for Infrastructure

By Des Dugan

THE government wants migrants to be relegated to the country to ease the pressure on the cities but is not prepared to look at the infrastructure of the country residents to facilitate this move.

Local Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party candidate Lee Watts brought the lack of public transport facilities home with her compliant: “we can’t even get a normal train service to get us to Newcastle or Tamworth for a full day.”

“It’s not even a matter of more trains, just trains on a sensible time-table so that you could get on a train anywhere between Tamworth and Newcastle and get to either major centre for the start of the work day and catch a train back at 5:30 once the work day is over,” she said.

“This would be such a simple thing that would allow the elderly to have a full day seeing a medical specialist instead of the expense of having to stay overnight, or allow University students to attend University and come home at night instead of relocating to Newcastle and allow people to work in these regional centres but still live in our electorate.

Lee Watts said the Upper Hunter has waited too long for train services.

“I listen to people every day in our community who need proper public transport to these regional centres and what they are asking for is absolutely reasonable.

“Again, they wouldn’t even have to put on extra trains, just trains with a better timetable, but they haven’t bothered to do that.”

There was a time when the region had eight train services a day/night between Sydney and the outer regions, now there is two from Scone to Hamilton and one direct to Sydney.

“I’m highly skeptical that the light at the end of the tunnel is a high-speed rail network and think it is more likely the election train rolling into town to deliver more empty promises 100 days out from the election,” she said.

“I wouldn’t be buying a ticket on that train just yet,” Lee Watts said.

Taking a swing at the pie-in-the-sky high-speed rail network, she said: “For decades they have promised bypasses for Scone, Muswellbrook and Singleton and Scone has only just started work, with no sod turn in sight for Singleton and Muswellbrook.

“The bypasses are a tiny fraction of the cost of high-speed rail, but look how long we have been waiting for those.

“And when you look at the farce that is the Sydney light rail, how it is blown out in budget and blown out with delays, imagine how they’d go doing four high-speed rail links.”