Roads were the big winner for Gilmore in the 2017/18 federal budget, but the Princes Highway and the Nowra bridge were shortchanged.
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The only new spending on roads went to projects in the coastal electorate. The Far North Collector Road project, connecting Illaroo Road in North Nowra to Moss Vale Road, will be completely funded with $13.8 million in 2017-18.
In the Eurobodalla, $4.3 million will be spent in the next financial year on various road and intersection upgrades.
Gilmore MP Ann Sudmalis said the Collector Road project would connect Cambewarra and Bomaderry residents to Bowral, Wollongong and South Nowra.
“Now that new subdivisions at Cambewarra and Bomaderry have been opened, there is quite a significant land release out there,” she said.
“If they don’t have a far better road that connects the new residents to get to them school and work, that would be very wrong planning.
“I can’t tell you when that [project] will start. Given they will get the funding in the 2017/18 financial year, I would think they would be starting work on that very quickly.”
The $4 million for the new Shoalhaven River crossing mentioned in the budget on Tuesday was money already spent.
Labor has put forward $50 million towards a new Nowra bridge, however Mrs Sudmalis says this would build just “the foundations and a few pylons”.
“It is nothing. We are going to do our 80 per cent when we have the final number,” she said.
“If you just want to fund a bridge, that is not going to solve anything for the residents of that area.
“The reason it is so expensive is because you must take into account the Illaroo Road intersection, the Bolong Road intersection and the Bridge Road intersection.
“Fifty million dollars is ridiculous; someone has not done their homework on that one. [The cost] will be in the order of about six times that amount of money.”
Mrs Sudmalis said she could not ask for funding until she had the “exact figure” for the project. She said the state government had not yet finalised costing.
On the employment front, the South Coast is one of 10 pilot regions to share in $220 million as part of a regional jobs and investment package.
The packages, aimed at delivering "sustainable employment", were funded over four years from last financial year.
The spend should help tackle the region's spiralling unemployment rate. The Southern Highlands/Shoalhaven's youth unemployment rate was 24.1 per cent in March, while the general unemployment rate was 6.7 per cent.
The region's university students had been warned of fee increases and changes to their loan repayments prior to the budget.
Some of the University of Wollongong's 32,953 enrolled students will need to pay back their loan debts earlier, with new thresholds to be introduced from July 1, 2018.
Mrs Sudmalis said a number of universities had stated they “would not change their fee structure”.
"I would object that university fees are going to rise,” she said.
“We have $25 billion in outstanding debt from people who are under the threshold currently. Isn’t it fair to the Australian people to try and get some of that money back?
“If people feel that is too expensive and they don’t feel they can go to university and get a job from that, then I have been advocating for months now for people to think about trades.
“Think about getting an apprenticeship because they get good money and we need trades people.”
Shoalhaven City Council is sure to welcome the government resuming the indexation of financial assistance grants. Indexation on the grants had been frozen since 2014.
“That is really good,” Mrs Sudmalis said.
“I will say, it [indexation freeze] has been a very welcomed initiative for our region because we have ended up with a whole lot of extra black spot funding and roads to recovery funding.
“The reason that was frozen was to bump extra money into the regions and that has been very helpful for our region.”
Small businesses are again among the budget winners with their instant asset write-offs extended for another year.
Businesses with a turnover of up to $10 million will be able to immediately write off expenditure up to $20,000 until June 30, 2018.
Among the budget cash splash was a $10 billion National Rail Program - aimed at providing better connections between regional centres and capital cities, and reducing the burden on our roads.
The South Coast rail line missed out, Mrs Sudmalis saying it was the responsibility of the NSW Government because it was a passenger rail line.
In good news for the ageing population of Gilmore, the government will reinstate the Pensioner Concession Card for pensioners who were no longer entitled to the pension due to assets test changes introduced earlier this year.