Member for New England Barnaby Joyce took time out from his busy schedule on Monday afternoon to take a walk around the $3.2 million, cement roundabout under construction near the entrance of Armidale Airport.
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The project was jointly funded by Armidale Regional Council to the tune of $1.2 million, while Roads and Maritime Services NSW and the Federal Government contributed $1 million each to the improvements.
Mr Joyce said as well as being an upgrade of the infrastructure of the New England Highway and it would give better access into the Airport .
“It’s an infrastructure project that will keep the local economy going. As the drought was coming in we wanted to make sure that we had projects that were bringing the dollars in,” he said.
We’re putting a million dollars into projects that will stimulate the local economy and keep people in a job.
- Barnaby Joyce
“For me it’s making sure that this corridor of commerce from the Bolivia Hill re-alignment right down to the Scone by-pass, and everything in between along the New England Highway, is continually upgraded.”
The roundabout will also feed into a 25 lot industrial sub-division and potential sites for a truck stop/petrol station and a motel.
“With the industrial area, there has been a lot of interest in having clear access to the highway,” Mr Joyce said.
“Some people have had businesses and now the town has grown up around them, and it makes it difficult taking heavy haulage through the town. So, this is going to be a safer and more immediate access to the highway.
“For Armidale, it works hand-in-glove with other projects we’re doing for all the areas, Like the Woodenbong to Legume road. We’ve been spending tens of millions of dollars in there now. I think it’s about $32 million.”
Mr Joyce said while 435,000 head of stock travelled the road, more importantly, so too did a lot of schoolchildren.
“We don’t want one of the school buses to meet a cattle truck going in the opposite direction,” he said.
“That [development] was one of the premier things when I came back to the New England, because it was a corner that nobody really cared about before and I thought we had to do a lot of work in that area.”