Ms JENNY AITCHISON (Maitland—Minister for Regional Transport and Roads) (16:47): I rise today to respond to comments by the Mayor of Maitland City Council. I am not surprised to hear him raising his voice against the New South Wales budget. As a former member of the Liberal Party and a former paid staff member for The Nationals, he takes every opportunity to raise his voice against any good initiatives of mine and of the New South Wales Labor Government. It is surprising that the comments he makes now are similar to those made by me as a member of the Opposition, without the support of him or his Liberal and Independent colleagues on council. Over more than eight years I constantly advocated for more resources and infrastructure to deal with Maitland's continued growth.

More than five people per day come to live in Maitland. It is one of the fastest growing local government areas in New South Wales. We are in agreement on that. However, unlike the mayor, I have constantly made that case, regardless of who was in government. It is a hard road in opposition, but my time in this place has been spent fighting for and winning the completed upgrades to Ashtonfield Public School and Rutherford Public School, the planned upgrades to Gillieston Public School, two new preschools at Tenambit and Gillieston Heights and the commitment to build a new school at Huntlee, which will take the pressure off our schools in west Maitland.

I also won the fight for the new Maitland Hospital to be fully public, and I advocated for all the new health facilities in the East Maitland health precinct, which mean people in Maitland no longer need to travel to Newcastle for oncology services. The mayor has incorrectly asserted there is no new funding for Maitland Hospital, which is absolutely untrue. There is an allocation of funding for the Maitland community health and community mental health building, which will be co-located at the new Maitland Hospital. We cannot redevelop the old one because patients are still there. In fact, the former Labor mayor oversaw the precinct plan, which she gave to the former Government, and it was totally ignored by members opposite. In addition, we are funding more nurses, doctors, paramedics and ancillary staff, which is what Maitland needs. Too many people are waiting at the hospital emergency department because they cannot get in to see their GPs. Our GP payroll tax incentive will help to increase bulk billing and take the pressure off the hospital.

We are investing in roads in Maitland. We have committed $15 million to start the duplication of the railway bridge at Thornton. We have suggested grant funding to council for the huge blowout in its program to upgrade Raymond Terrace Road. We have provided more money for Melville Ford Bridge, Maitland Vale Road and Melville Road, as well as rolled out nearly $2 million for pothole and heavy patching repairs in the budget last year. Add to that the massive investment in roads across the Hunter. Somewhere in the order of $3.5 billion of projects are under construction. We are getting on with the job of improving life for everyone in the Hunter, including Maitland. We are also escalating disaster relief to get our roads and other essential infrastructure back on track. Our record-breaking investment in housing will help people in Maitland, where the rental vacancy rate is less than 1 per cent. The maintenance of our social housing properties will ensure that people in social housing live in dignity. And quarantining funds for victims and survivors of domestic violence and their families is something we should all be proud of.

In regard to Walka Water Works, the mayor should have been on top of his brief. Instead of backing in a failed caravan project that was rejected by the community, he should have done the hard work to advocate for remediation funding. I have fought for and won $20 million for remediation of contamination in Maitland, and won legislative changes. I will continue to fight for more remediation. There are 364 days in the year other than budget day, and I work on all of them. In addition to the Walka debacle, the mayor has seen the closure of the jail managed by council, with one day's notice. Yet another tourism grant was applied for under members opposite, rather than looking for funding for maintenance and upgrades, which would have kept it open.

But the mayor has a habit of shutting down public spaces and halls in Maitland, rather than doing the hard work of fixing them. He has refused to let the seniors back into their hall, while he sits in his $40 million offices. He has refused to reopen the Maitland Park Bowling Club, which, coincidently, he was a former secretary of. It was closed and burnt down under his watch. The promise to community groups to let them use the old administration centre has been broken, and now he is trying to close down the visitor information centre. That is six community assets closed down or unusable on his watch, and he will not take responsibility for any of it. He is happy to sit in his massive building on his massive wage increase, and put out comments on social media and Facebook, without doing anything to fix the issues. If this were anything more than a pre-election stunt for his mayoralty in September, the mayor would have reached out to me much earlier on these issues and asked for assistance. People know I am here for the community of Maitland, every year, not just election year; and every day, not just budget day.