THE biggest challenges for the Bega Valley region are infrastructure and unemployment, Member for Kiama Gareth Ward has said.
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With his priorities tourism, infrastructure and employment, he said the first has a natural advantage due to the beauty of the region but the latter two involve “enormous challenges”.
In terms of infrastructure, he said there was still work to be done on the Princes Hwy from Batemans Bay to Bega and his government was identifying the bad spots on the road.
When asked what to do about the stretch of the Princes Hwy, 5km north of Bega, that winds up a hill to the Bega lookout and has been the location of multiple crashes, Mr Ward encouraged Bega Valley Shire Council to apply for blackspot funding to improve the site.
“At the end of the day, people don’t care who fixes it as long as it is fixed,” he said.
Mr Ward said over the past 12 months NSW generated three times the number of jobs of the next strongest state in the Commonwealth – Victoria – but he believed his region still needed to be improved.
“It’s great, but the reality is that there are still people in the unemployment cue and more work to be done,” he said.
He said youth unemployment in the region is higher than the state average and the participation rate - the number of people working or activity seeking work - is lower compared to other regional areas in NSW.
Ways to fix unemployment were to generate jobs through such actions as payroll tax incentives and to attract businesses to regional NSW.
Mr Ward, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Premier for the Illawarra and South Coast, made the comments when visiting Bega on Monday, November 30 as part of his role to oversee issues in the region from Helensburgh to the Victorian border.
He also met with the staff of Member for Bega Andrew Constance and described Mr Constance as a close friend he has known for many years.