Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome this opportunity to reject the brash Labor statements about infrastructure in Sydney. Coming from an electorate which has the highest rate of car ownership in the country—that is, the highest number of cars per household of any electorate in Australia—I can attest to the fact that rail is a very important link with communities as a transport option. I can also attest that the New South Wales state Labor government has failed to deliver a rail line for the north-west of Sydney for 16 years. That is 16 years of failure in an area that has the highest car ownership rate in the entire country. My area, one of the fastest growing communities in Sydney, has been left behind by governments which refuse to allow either a government option or a private sector option in the delivery of rail.

When you take into account the rhetoric that we hear from Labor members opposite about climate change and emissions and saving the planet, you would think that a rail line in north-west Sydney was one of the top priorities for a Labor government or indeed a Labor Party. In Sydney, the biggest city in Australia, with the highest rate of car ownership in the country, what did we get from the Rudd government? On 7 October 2008 last year, a date that will live in infamy, that belies this motion, we heard, ‘No votes in north-west metro, Rudd tells Rees’. That is what the Prime Minister said to the Premier. There are no votes in delivering rail to the north-west of Sydney—that is what we are to believe from a cabinet meeting leak last year that was revealed to the public. The New South Wales state government was rejected for federal funding for infrastructure for the north-west of Sydney because there were no votes in it.

When you look at the record of the state Labor government in New South Wales on infrastructure delivery to the outer suburbs of our major cities, you see that they have clearly failed them. They not only cancelled the north-west rail line; they cancelled the south-west rail line. In 2008, what we did not know when this story broke about the federal government’s refusal to build a much needed rail line in the biggest city in our country—because there were no votes in it—and what we do know now is that the federal government was planning to cut off Sydney completely from the infrastructure funding teat. There is plenty of money being spent on infrastructure in this country. That is absolutely right. I will be interested to hear what the member for Lowe has to say about this. But Sydney received virtually nothing in the infrastructure spend from the Rudd government. There are a number of possible reasons for this.

Of course, we know that the incompetence of the New South Wales Labor government is absolutely breathtaking and that you would not give them a dollar to save themselves. That is an acceptable argument, something that we on this side are prepared to entertain. However, if you consider the vast need of the people of Sydney—it is our biggest city, it is one of our most poorly planned cities, it has a desperate need for better public transport infrastructure—the Rudd government failed to deliver anything but the smallest amount of money for a study for a metro line. I am sure the member for Lowe will endorse that, because the inner city metro line is proposed to run from the city to his electorate. There is already an existing heavy rail line that runs from his electorate to the city. There are bus transport alternatives, there are light rail alternatives and it is only a short transport time. But all those who live in the outer suburbs of our major cities, such as in my community in the south-west of Sydney, in Lindsay, Macarthur and Macquarie, have been left in the lurch by successive state and federal governments. They have been given grants of land, they have been allowed huge corridors of development, but public transport infrastructure has been completely and utterly unplanned.

Before anybody on that side gets up here and tries to tell us that this was part of the Howard government’s failure, this was promised continually in the last 15 years by a New South Wales state Labor government—promised, promised, promised, promised. The people of New South Wales voted for it several times and it has not been delivered. Now it has been shelved. Both the north-west and the south-west rail corridors in the biggest city of our country have been permanently shelved. It is to the shame of this Labor government that that has happened. It is a shame that it has spent no money on infrastructure in Sydney, and the voters of Sydney, the people of Sydney, the communities of Sydney, which are suffering from a lack of rail and transport options, should punish this Labor government for its absolute and utter mismanagement of rail infrastructure. (Time expired)

See this speech in context