Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

It is actually rare when you have an election at a state level that you can send a message to two governments—a hard-hearted coalition government in Canberra and an incompetent one in Macquarie Street in New South Wales. At the federal level, you see the federal budget has cut $80 billion in spending on schools and hospitals, and infrastructure spending is below what it should be. How does that translate at the state level? We have seen a cardiac ward closed at Mt Druitt hospital. We have seen a failure to provide and support health infrastructure in our area. We have seen schools lose their funding. And on infrastructure, there is one particular body in our area that will suffer as a result of political football playing between Tony Abbott and Mike Baird. The Mt Druitt Learning Ground, based at Bidwell, has been there for 10 years helping students who have been kicked out of school, making sure that they are picked up and kept on the path to training and fulfilling their future aspirations. That facility will be shut because Tony Abbott's government will not fund it and Mike Baird's government is trying to work out how he can avoid funding it. We have young people in our area denied the opportunity to fulfil their potential and denied the ability to follow-up on that potential. This is what happens when you have two levels of government team up and hurt our part of Western Sydney. It is completely unacceptable. So this weekend, send a message to both Tony Abbott and Mike Baird and vote to support your local area.

See this speech in context