Ms JENNY AITCHISON (Maitland—Minister for Regional Transport and Roads) (20:02): I thank the Maitland local community for re-electing me at the recent State election and also for the honour of forming government. I am so excited to get to work on the commitments Labor made in my electorate of Maitland and right across the State. I am passionate about Labor's $19 million commitment for urgent road upgrades and repairs, including emergency road repairs, across Maitland after 12 years of neglect by the Coalition, compounded by flood and a systemic failure to invest in our regional road maintenance.

Labor's $17.5 million road upgrade package for Maitland will include $15 million towards planning and early works for duplication of Thornton Rail Bridge and $2.5 million to replace the Melville Ford timber bridge, which will help in your electorate of Upper Hunter, Mr Temporary Speaker. Another $1.8 million will be provided from the new emergency road repairs fund to address the road maintenance backlog for the Maitland electorate. This is in addition to the funding included in the former Government's Fixing Local Roads Pothole Repair Round from earlier this year, which saw regional councils getting only $1 for every $5 for pot hole repair in Sydney.

We are acting immediately to get Maitland and the regions moving again. I am proud to say that, over the past eight years, the Maitland community has secured nearly $3 million in funding for vital projects through the Community Building Partnership program. In addition, sporting groups shared in funding through the Local Sport Grant Program to the tune of more than $400,000. Providing financial support to community organisations and modern and functional sport and recreation facilities enhances the health and wellbeing of everyone in our community.

Keeping Maitland Hospital firmly in public hands has been one of the greatest and proudest achievements of my time as member for Maitland over the past eight years. We petitioned hard, with over 30,000 signatures, against the Coalition's planned privatisation of the new hospital, forcing it to scrap its plans and ensure Maitland Hospital remained in public hands. In addition to winning this very hard-fought privatisation debate, we fought for and won additional infrastructure for the hospital, including multiple solar panels, a rooftop helipad, a catheterisation lab for cardiac patients, short-stay ward for the emergency department, an MRI machine, negative‑pressure rooms for COVID patients, six individual birthing suites with their own ensuites and birthing baths, an intensive care unit and chemotherapy chairs. It is a state-of-the-art facility, with the final bed capacity increasing from 188 to 339.

Even before it was completed, the new hospital started to attract new specialists and health facilities to Maitland. The proximity of the new hospital to the private hospital has helped attract specialists who work across both the public and the private systems. We are already seeing new cancer services, including radiotherapy. I have already been a strong advocate for safe staffing levels and more regional paramedics, to help our struggling health workers. I am so pleased to deliver them under Labor. I have invited the health Minister to Maitland again to check on our progress, because I know that our staff across the hospital system is struggling.

I am so pleased because the redevelopment of Gillieston Public School is finally progressing and will become a reality. I have been working side by side with members of the school community since before I was elected to Parliament to pressure the then Government to invest and bring the school up to a twenty-first-century standard. We are a long way from when the floor in the boys' toilets was dirt, in 2015. This is in addition to upgrades to Rutherford Public School, Bolwarra Public School, Ashtonfield Public School, Rutherford Technology High School and Francis Greenway High School, plus a new high school at Huntlee in your electorate of Upper Hunter, Mr Temporary Speaker, which will take the pressure off Rutherford Technology High School. We have already converted over 1,000 permanent teaching positions across the State to full-time work, and we are working on our goal of having 10,000 teachers and 6,000 learning support staff members.

Other major achievements and milestones during the past few years include the building of the brand‑new Maitland Regional Athletics Centre and important work on the nationally significant Morpeth Bridge, which is a renowned example of a timber trestle bridge with Allan trusses and is rightly listed on the State Heritage Register. We welcomed the announcement of a new ambulance module for Maitland, based at the new Rutherford Ambulance Station, consisting of an additional transport vehicle and 12 paramedics, which is a development I have been advocating strongly for since we won the fight for a fully public hospital in Maitland. Other achievements include an upgrade worth more than $2 million to Maitland Police Station and a new fire station at Rutherford. Additional staffing for our firies and police is also on my radar.

Another milestone achievement was addressing the Rutherford stink, which had plagued residents surrounding the Rutherford industrial estate for years. I campaigned strongly on this issue, resulting in Hunter Water finally closing the former Truegain site at Rutherford in 2016, when the Environment Protection Authority failed to act. It took another four or five years, but we finally got a change in legislation to hold those polluters to account and also succeeded in getting a historic commitment to clean up the site. There is way more to do. I am up for the challenge. I thank the electorate for letting me have another crack.