Tenders have not yet gone out to rebuild the Thurra River bridge, destroyed by fire nearly two years ago - and it will not be rebuilt until 2024.

This was confirmed in a response to questions at Committee hearings with Departmental representatives in Parliament on Friday and local Nationals MP, Tim Bull has branded it a disgrace.

“The bridge provides access to Point Hicks and 45 camp sites at the Thurra River campground, so it is important to the economy of Cann River, which has been knocked around by fires, COVID and border closures.

“They say it’s a priority, but the scale and complexity of work is the hold up. For goodness sake, they cannot treat us like fools - a bridge was built there over 30 years ago, and our engineering skills have advanced a bit since then,” he said.

“It’s strange that this Government can design and deliver complex metropolitan level crossing removals quickly, but they cannot build a bridge over a river.

“In their responses they mentioned multiple times the restoring access to ‘the island’ was important. There is no island, it’s part of the mainland - it’s a bridge over a river.

“There is just no excuse that it has still not gone to tender after just on two years.

“I was expecting all this this major infrastructure to be finished within 12 months as that was the underlying message, we got at the media conferences when the Premier was here.

“However, here we are two years on, and the bridge is still two years away, the cabins at Conran are not rebuilt, the Conran boardwalk has not been started, day areas and walking tracks remain closed.

“In this time Parks have opened 24 playgrounds in the metropolitan area. It’s not good enough.”

Mr Bull said his comments were not a reflection on local Parks staff who had been cooperative.

“It is my view they are also the victims of this lack of urgency up the food chain, but they have been good to deal with.”

Monday, 15 November 2021