Ms JENNY AITCHISON (Maitland) (17:50): I highlight some of the achievements made in the electorate of Maitland over the past eight years since I was elected. We have fought hard, and we got the Maitland Hospital. I acknowledge the presence in the Chamber of the Minister for Health, which I mention because I am grateful for the fact that it is a fully public hospital. We are still working on getting full staffing to get it right, and that will be a challenge. But we are working on that at the moment with the new Minister for Regional Health. To get nearly half a billion dollars worth of investment in a non-Government held electorate after seven years and to fight off privatisation was a huge coup for our community. I pay tribute to the unions that were involved, including the Health Services Union, the NSW Nurses and Midwives' Association and the Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation. I also pay tribute to the community that came together to do that. We had petition debates and ran a long campaign.
In the last budget we also secured a commitment for an additional building to centralise some of the health services in the fantastic precinct that has been established around the hospital. When I go around the State, I see other areas where the Government has planned significant investments for very many years. I was in the electorate of South Coast the other day in Moruya. There is a hospital upgrade and a bypass, and it is all a bit confused. It puts a brake on investment when the private sector does not know what governments are doing. I think in Maitland we got it right.
We have also had a number of new school infrastructure projects and significant upgrades. Gillieston Public School is on the books; it will happen. We have some time frames and we know it will be a rebuild and not a nineteenth-century school building. We got rid of the dirt floors in the boys toilets. We will hopefully have the septic properly connected to the town's sewer this year, which is a really good thing. Ashtonfield Public School was the last public school built in Maitland and was built as a new school in 2007 under the former Labor Government. For the fastest growing community in New South Wales, we have had to fight for every single classroom and desk. Now the fight is on to get teachers. Rutherford Public School and Bolwarra Public School have been upgraded, and that has been good too.
We have had upgrades to Metford Road, which is a major connector between the two State roads in front of Maitland Hospital. Again, I thank the Minister for Health for that. We had the road at Testers Hollow raised after the Federal member for Paterson and I did a lot of work on that issue. We also worked to get a MRI licence for the new Maitland Hospital approved. That is a great outcome. We received funding for Walka Water Works enhancements and there is some funding for Oakhampton Road. A new ambulance station and pod was also funded. With the commitment of a local member, it is possible to achieve good things from Opposition.
In my time as the local member, Maitland police station, Maitland Fire and Rescue station and Maitland Showground have all received upgrades. There was also the duplication of roads at Rutherford. Work on the updated Maitland flood plain finally commenced; however, there is much more work to do on that. Some $8 million was invested in the Thornton Road network at Raymond Terrace and traffic lights were installed on the half overpass at Maitland. However, there is still more work to do there, about which I have been talking to Transport for NSW.
In 2018 Victoria Street station received a mobility upgrade, which included three new lifts, new canopies and the refurbishment of the heritage platform. Before I was elected to Parliament, I invited the Hon. Penny Sharpe to the Hunter. She asked why I was asking for the upgrade because she said that it was already disability accessible. The former transport Minister, and former member for Willoughby, who then became the Premier, had long promised the upgrade. Even though the work had not been done and the station was not disability accessible, Transport for NSW changed the description of the station on its website to say that it was. But I got the job done and the Government finally invested in the upgrade.
During my time in Parliament, 103 Community Building Partnership grants have been provided to community groups across my electorate. Nearly 40 grants from the Local Sport Grant Program have also been given out. My electorate has also done well out of the Stronger Country Communities Fund, with over $5.5 million of programs being funded through grants—a list of which I will table so that they can be seen. The NSW Boating Now Program has funded upgrades to boat ramps in my electorate. My constituents did not benefit as much as they should have from the Fixing Country Roads program, but they have benefited from the Regional Tourism Activation Fund and the Regional Sports Infrastructure Fund. They also received $2.5 million from the Resources for Regions program. The Maitland electorate has received many millions of dollars from this Government, despite the fact that it is not a great government and it should go. The people of my electorate will do better under a Labor government, but I have not done badly as an Opposition member.
