Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The residents of the Hawkesbury do not generally ask for a lot from their governments. They are an independent, resourceful people, many descendant from the early settlers who came up the Hawkesbury River in the late 1790s and early 1800s. In 1874, the Windsor Bridge was built to allow easier passage across what was then and still is a busy thoroughfare to the bustling heart of Windsor and Thompson Square, itself a Georgian square unmatched by any other in the settlement. Both Windsor Bridge and Thompson Square still stand, but not for long if the New South Wales government has its way and the Turnbull government fails to step up to save colonial heritage and fund an alternative.

If anyone should care about this, it is our Prime Minister, who is a direct descendant of John Turnbull, one of the first Scottish born free settlers in New South Wales. John Turnbull established Ebenezer Church in the Hawkesbury, which still stands as the oldest church building in Australia. In fact, I attended a wonderful fundraising fete there only a couple of weekends ago. So the Prime Minister, whose ancestors will have travelled the route from Windsor to Ebenezer before and after the bridge was built, should care as much, if not more, than the thousands of locals who want to see this bridge and Thompson Square preserved. I am told the Prime Minister is very proud of his heritage, but he must remember that a single building always sits in the context of the towns around it; destroy them and history is lost.

The first step in protecting this heritage is one of those decisions that, in fact, would cost no money. What is needed is a decision to do an emergency heritage listing. The New South Wales government are ignoring their own heritage department advice to proceed with the replacement bridge at Windsor. They are also ignoring the protests of local community members, called CAWBies. The CAWBies have occupied the square in pairs for 24 hours a day for more than 1,000 days—and let me tell you: it gets very cold in Windsor at three o'clock on a Sunday morning in the middle of winter. We believe it is the longest ever heritage protest that has been held in Australia, and it continues to this day.

At a national level, research done during the last three years has identified the real story of this place—not just its Georgian buildings that could be straight out of a Jane Austin novel, but the fact that it is the place of the birth of a fair go, where Governor Lachlan Macquarie, rather than naming this square after a lord or a king, chose a reformed convict, Andrew Thompson, as its namesake. It was symbolic of Macquarie's view that redemption was possible, that a convict could be given a second chance in Australia and make good and that your birthright did not dictate your ability to rise in society through hard work—all these values that helped shape Australia and make it the sort of place that it is today. This is a story worth preserving, and the Minister for the Environment could do it today, as we would have done were we in office. I should also note that only this week Hawkesbury council, newly elected with a new set of councillors, have also moved that they will request the minister to do national listing for Thompson Square.

Not only are the Liberal state government willing to destroy an historic bridge that represents a major engineering project in the state for its time and a square, which is the oldest remaining public square in the country—older than Port Arthur—but they are willing to do it for no traffic improvement. The project replaces a two-lane bridge with a two-lane bridge. Is it because the lanes are not wide enough? Well, they are three metres wide—the same as those on Anzac Bridge in Sydney and wider than some of the lanes on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. So why invest what is now estimated at up to $100 million in something that destroys heritage and provides no tangible improvement to traffic? You would have to ask why. There is no answer.

Labor thinks there is a better way: save the square and identify and build a third crossing of the Hawkesbury River. That would provide a real traffic solution for those who are tired of spending 40 or 50 minutes every morning crossing two very crowded historic bridges across the Hawkesbury. That is why we promised $500,000 to do a comprehensive study of local traffic, building on the work that has been done in recent years. That was one of our key election commitments—unfortunately not matched by the government.

Let's remember that the only people who have allocated funds to be used on roads in the Hawkesbury in memory are federal Labor. In 2010, $20 million was set aside for improvements to North Richmond Bridge, with $2 million for a study into the short- and long-term options and the remaining $18 million being used towards the work, which, six years on, is only just happening now—and not in full because there appears there is going to be new funding yet to meet the total $28 million bill for it. If it had been left to the Liberals to deliver these improvements, they would never have happened.

Six years on, though, they do not go far enough. Yet there is no genuine desire or action by the Liberals to get this essential third crossing happening, to get trucks out of our towns and to get through traffic off our roads so that locals can go where they need to in a reasonable time. When you have driven an hour and a half from the city after work in the afternoon, the last thing you want is for the last part of the drive, what should be a five-minute journey, to take you 25 or 50 minutes. As the suburban outskirts of Sydney edge closer to the still distinctive Macquarie towns, the rich history of the area—the buildings, the bridges, the spaces—become increasingly important to the community's sense of identity. A third crossing would protect that but allow workers, families and tradespeople of the Hawkesbury to have a 21st century road experience.

I am also disappointed not to see in this appropriation bill additional funding for Hawkesbury Hospital. Hawkesbury Hospital is a really key piece of infrastructure in our community. As the smaller sister to Nepean Hospital, Hawkesbury has long been overlooked, but it serves more than 65,000 people in an area which has more growth to come. There are many things needed at Hawkesbury Hospital, which provides public and private services to our community, and I look forward to working with St John of God, who operate it, to deliver improvements over many years. One of the things needed is a new operating theatre, which Labor committed $5 million towards at the last election.

This time last year there were more than 800 people waiting for elective surgery at the hospital. Older patients were waiting for things like orthopaedic and eye surgery and children were waiting for ear, nose and throat surgery. Doctors tell me that there is simply not enough space for them to do all the operations that they would otherwise have the capacity to do. More operating beds would mean more work for staff and, as the hospital is a key employer in the area, any investment would be a good investment.

The Hawkesbury is a region where, if they can, people want to work near home. Train services are not great, roads are congested as you head towards Sydney and commuting times are long. The more jobs that we can have locally the better it will be for our major centres of Windsor and Richmond. Like cuts to education, which hit our schools and staff numbers hard, cuts to health hit our local nurses and our hospital staff. It is well known that Nepean, which is under enormous pressure due to federal funding cuts, is not coping and that staff there are facing real challenges. It has the worst waiting times in the state. Our local health district is crying out for funding. Hawkesbury hospital could play a role here. This government should be investing in health spending if they want to create jobs and Hawkesbury hospital would be a great place to start.

The Hawkesbury is a very diverse area and one of the things that it thrives on is the local small businesses. South Windsor shops are a sometimes thriving or sometimes quieter part of the world, depending on which day of the week you are there. They are in desperate need of a little bit of support. South Windsor is the heart of the older part of the wider Windsor community. It is a little strip of shops. We have our newsagent, we have our post office, we have takeaways, we have beauty shops and, fortunately, we have a wonderful florist. Jo Dunstan runs Angels Florist and she has spearheaded a campaign to have CCTV for South Windsor shops. She has been asking for years, we have run petitions and we have pleaded with council to prioritise South Windsor. They need help to deter graffiti, antisocial behaviour and, occasionally, serious crime. I am very pleased to say that, during the election, the other side finally saw the light and recognised that our commitment to fund CCTV for South Windsor is an essential piece of infrastructure. This was a bipartisan commitment. I am also very pleased to say that the funding is already finding its way to Hawkesbury City Council, which means that this community is finally going to have, after years of work, the sort of boost that small businesses need not just to stay safe and strong but also to grow. I have also spoken to a lot of pensioners in South Windsor who are very grateful that soon, we hope, there will be an extra layer of security. They tell me that they feel more vulnerable on the streets as they age, so having CCTV cameras will give them more reason to go out and connect with people and walk around South Windsor shops. That is the sort of commitment that we need to be seeing. I am very pleased that one of my election commitments is able to be delivered so promptly.

There is another election commitment that was made by the government, and I look forward to a similar speedy delivery of $300,000 funding for roads for the Hawkesbury District Agricultural Association. The Hawksbury show is one of the highlights of the social, agricultural and economic calendar of the Hawkesbury. Bill Shorten, the member for Maribyrnong, came to the Hawkesbury show with me this year. The problem for the Hawkesbury agricultural people is that they have had no investment from government over many years. The amount of $300,000, which we are told will be arriving shortly, will allow them to upgrade roads and make it a fantastic experience for the many people who come from all over, not just from Sydney but from outside Sydney to the show. In fact, this is the largest show outside the Sydney Royal Easter Show, so I would encourage you to come for a visit next year.

The Hawksbury sits in an area that has a very strong and important equine industry. We breed horses in the Hawkesbury and we race horses in the Hawkesbury. The connections to agriculture still run very deep. I met a man the other night who actually wins the tapestry prize at the Hawkesbury show every year. So locals very proudly display their wares at the show. Something like $300,000, it is not a large amount, will make such a difference for this community. As one of the many people who sets up a stall at the Hawkesbury show every year, I look forward to seeing those roads down and tarred in time for next year's show.

There are many other things we would have liked to have seen in the appropriation bills 2016-17, and many I will speak about at more length, but I think the bottom line for the Hawkesbury is that it does not make unrealistic demands on government. Certainly the commitments we made in the Hawkesbury were very reasonable. These are things that will improve people's quality of life. They will boost productivity and employment. They will improve community health, and one of those examples is a $50,000 commitment that we think needs to be delivered to the Women's Cottage. This Women's Cottage provides domestic violence counselling support. It is run by women for women. It is one of those organisations that runs on the smell of an oily rag. How they manage to do so much with so little is an extraordinary feat, and what they need are slightly better premises in which to operate. I hope we see that money coming through. That is the sort of improvement to community life and health that our commitments will bring that we would like to see out of these bills. I will be working to make sure those commitments are delivered by this government.

See this speech in context