The great infrastructure gap that continues to cost the Illawarra big
Kiama MP Katelin McInerney on roads, trains, and care workers
The Illawarra is growing. What’s less certain is whether the infrastructure holding the region together can keep pace and, according to Katelin McInerney, the answer right now is no.
The Kiama MP, who won the September 2025 by-election after convicted rapist Gareth Ward was jailed, is frank about what she inherited.
As a guest on the Community Industry Group’s Community Matters podcast with CEO Nicky Sloan, McInerney addressed a broad range of issues.
Among them the years of deferred spending and planning decisions that have been quietly kicked down the road. The unreliable train line, the crumbling roads, and a rapidly ageing population is placing pressure on a care workforce that can’t find affordable housing close enough to show up for work.
The commuter question
Infrastructure conversations in NSW, she said, tend to fixate on the north. High-speed rail to Newcastle, metro extensions, harbour crossings. McInerney is measured but pointed about where that leaves the Illawarra and South Coast.
“We would just like a commuter service that gets us from Bombaderry to Central in a reasonable time without being thrown off onto a bus somewhere else at some other point.”
It’s a modest ask. The benchmark for the region isn’t ambitious, it’s functional. Weekend service unreliability is a particular frustration, and it matters more than it might seem. For professionals weighing a move to the Illawarra, the lifestyle equation only works if the commute does.
The pothole tax
Local roads have become a frontline political issue, and McInerney doesn’t dismiss that. The $39 million injected into road maintenance in the Kiama electorate since 2023 is significant, but she’s careful to frame it as remediation, not investment. The network degraded over years; the money is catching up, not getting ahead.
“Potholes can really take a hit into the family budget ... if you do a tyre on a pothole, it’s a significant challenge.”
There are longer-term projects in the pipeline. The Nowra-Shoalhaven bypass; the Tripoli Way corridor, first gazetted in 1961 and effectively frozen since, has finally moved. Macquarie Pass widening is underway. These are meaningful wins, but it will take time to flow through to the afternoon gridlock that clogs the region’s main arteries.
The care economy and where people live
The Kiama electorate has a median age of 48, eight years older than the NSW average, which goes a way to highlighting the Illawarra’s dependence on the care sector. Healthcare, disability support, and aged care aren’t peripheral industries here; they are load-bearing.
The problem is that recruiting and retaining care workers requires affordable housing near hospitals and clinics, and the rental market isn’t providing it. The government’s response, $21.7 million for health worker accommodation in the Shoalhaven, plus a new housing precinct alongside the Shellharbour Hospital development, reflects an acknowledgment that workforce planning and housing policy can’t be run as separate conversations any longer, McInerney said.
Using your representative
The Kiama MP’s broader point is one that regional business leaders don’t always hear clearly: a local MP is a more useful resource than most people understand. “I am a representative for every member of the electorate ... and I really would like to be a conduit for that.”
Her message to the region’s employers, developers, and industry bodies is direct: her office is a working channel to ministerial decision-makers, not just a place to lodge a complaint and wait.
The infrastructure gap won’t close on its own. McInerney’s argument is that closing it requires a sustained feedback loop between the people experiencing the friction and the people with the power to fix it. That loop starts with picking up the phone.
Watch the full interview with Katelin McInerney on the Community Matters podcast.