With the dust settling from Tuesday's federal budget, attention has turned to what the state government has to offer Ballarat infrastructure.
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Several massive state government-supported projects in Ballarat are nearing completion, including the Ballarat Line Upgrade, the GovHub, and the next phase of the train station precinct works.
The federal budget included $3.9 million in new funding for smaller road upgrades across the city as part of the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure program, and allocated money to progress the Western Rail Plan, but flagship projects like the next stage of the Ballarat Link Road were not funded.
The Committee for Ballarat's chief executive, Michael Poulton, said there were four clear priorities for this month's state government budget - securing the Link Road, supporting the damaged visitor economy, getting back on track with recycling and the circular economy, and locking in a tunnel as part of the Melbourne Airport Rail Link project.
He called for other important bodies like Commerce Ballarat, Ballarat Regional Tourism, and the Australian Industry Group to join with the Committee, and the City of Ballarat, to push for more influence as the state budget approaches.
The second stage of the Link Road from Remembrance Drive to Carngham Road, estimated at about $11 million, is a good example of an infrastructure project that would bring a massive benefit to Ballarat in the short and long-term, he said, particularly as the population booms in growth zones to the south-west.
"We'll continue to have congestion building and growing, we'll continue to have frustration building and growing, and we'll lose out on the opportunity to put in place long-term planning strategies if we don't get the infrastructure built first," he said.
"It's incredibly expensive to retrofit or bring in infrastructure afterwards - we've got greenfield sites in our west and north development, it's important we have the capacity to build the infrastructure that is needed prior to those growth zones going ahead."
Another key point to consider is how the Link Road would eventually join the Midland Highway in later stages - this will require clear plans to avoid sending more trucks through Buninyong.
Mr Poulton said investigating a bypass should be back on the table in the long-term.
"There has to be a long-term plan that includes a Buninyong bypass, but the answer can't be the obvious extension of the Link Road stage two and putting more trucks in Sebastopol and Magpie and then through Buninyong," he said.
"Unless you've got that long-term view, you finish up with a piecemeal approach, an that long-term view can only be achieved with a collaborative, concerted effort to look at the greenfield development of infrastructure, as opposed to 'how are we going to fix this problem' because we've realised there's too many trucks going through Buninyong."
Mr Poulton said the city needed a united front in future lobbying activities, given the success other regional cities achieved in the federal budget.
"I think what (the budget) highlights is that Ballarat hasn't been in a position where it's been able to leverage enough support or enough persuasion to get funding for some big projects which other regional cities have been able to do," he said.
"I think Ballarat has to take the learning from that.
"I don't think it's been helpful that through the past six to eight months, through a time of absolute crisis for the country, that locally, our main drivers from local government has been in disarray - we've lost the CEO, we've lost every director, we've had a very critical ombudsman report, we're going through a massive change in Ballarat internally from a key leadership perspective, and we seem to have missed out on opportunities.
"Does that explain why we've missed out on opportunities before? No, it doesn't, but what it does say is that we're susceptible if we're not united and concerted in our efforts to lobby at a state and federal level for major projects.
"Clearly Geelong and Bendigo and other regional cities around the country are doing that better than we are.
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"Let's decide, as a community, on what the three, maybe five, most important projects are, and be really concerted in our efforts to go out and lobby for that - how do we secure the funding to nail the All Waste Interchange, green energies, the Intermodal Freight Hub?
"There are lots of plans and strategies that seem to be written but we haven't had the capacity to deliver on them, and we need the money to do so, and the Link Road is a good example of that."
The City of Ballarat is currently in caretaker mode and was unable to comment.
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