ANOTHER major work site will soon be established in Bathurst as the NSW Government’s cash splash on the city continues.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The government’s extensive upgrade to the Great Western Highway at Kelso only finished in March, but in the months since, work has begun on a new car park at the Bathurst Railway Station, a new $1.2 million car park has been confirmed for Bathurst Base Hospital and, now, a site has been announced for a new ambulance station for the city.
That’s a lot of attention the city is enjoying.
But it’s doubtful anyone will be complaining.
Whether that attention is a result of the scare the NSW Government received when the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers won the seat of Orange from the Nationals last year, or clever timing as we push past the halfway point of this term of government, or simply Member for Bathurst Paul Toole’s lobbying skills, the result is the same.
Bathurst is progressively ticking off some of its infrastructure priorities: a better eastern entrance to the city, more car spaces at the railway station, which has undergone a revival in popularity since the Bathurst Bullet daily train service to Sydney began, and more spaces at Bathurst Base Hospital, where patients and nearby residents alike are frustrated by the parking limitations.
New items will continue to be added to the city’s infrastructure list – there has already been agitation for the Great Western Highway upgrade to be extended to Raglan, for instance – but the NSW Government is likely to have at least one major local project underway for some time yet.
And in politics, action is everything.
It’s not your last project that’s important, it’s your current one.
There will be regular commuters through Kelso who are already forgetting what the highway was like three years ago, so the NSW Government will not necessarily be able to point to that road upgrade as a win for Bathurst as the 2019 poll rolls around.
The Kelso upgrade will have been well and truly absorbed into Bathurst life by then.
And as the campaigning begins, local voters will want to know what their government has done for them lately.
If the timing is right, the sounds of construction will be ringing out somewhere in the city as the countdown begins in earnest to the next state election in March 2019.
And is that a bad thing for Bathurst?
Not at all.
