During the day, the Member for New England and Minister for Agriculture visited the Northaven recycling centre, Consolidated Manufacturing Enterprise on Swanbrook Road and Inverell Shire Council. His simple message to businesses, organis-ations and council was if there were any projects that may need future government funding then they need to be ready to go. 

“The one thing we will do in this term of government, there’s going to be incredible stringency on a whole range of recurring expenditure, but the one area where they will spend money will be infrastructure,” Mr Joyce said. 

“I’ve seen some of the budgets and had discussions in cabinet and that’s why I want people to have projects shovel ready so that if an infrastructure project happens we’ve got all our ducks lined up.”

Mr Joyce was aware there were different issues throughout the electorate and said the increased expenditure on infrastructure also included more road funding.

Mayor Paul Harmon said Inverell Shire Council had projects ‘in the draw’ and ready to go.

“They relate around transport corridors where there’s certain pinch points in the system. One of those raised certainly isn’t in our shire. There is an issue with a couple of the bridges on the Gwydir Highway to the west of us that limits B-triple access into our shire,” Cr Harmon said.

He said council’s backlog in infrastructure spending was being reviewed by council staff.

“Once we have our staff go through and look at that under the new Australian standards, we’ll be able to report what our actual backlog is,” Cr Harmon said.

T Corp’s Financial Assessment and Benchmarking Report dated March 7, 2013, stated “The council reported an $87.5m backlog in 2011 that is mainly related to roads (88 per cent). The infrastructure backlog has increased considerably in 2011 primarily due to the increased backlog in sealed and unsealed roads. Overall, the council has spent an increasing amount on asset maintenance and renewal but the infrastructure backlog is still increasing.”