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

I want to use this opportunity in our nation's parliament to not only give an understanding of what it is like to live in the electorate that I am proud to represent, Chifley, but to also extend my heartfelt thanks to the electorate for the faith that they have put in me to allow me the opportunity to serve. Being able to represent any area of this fantastic nation of ours is a great honour and I cherish every single day that I am here, in spite of the highs and lows. We try to recognise that we have been accorded a very rare opportunity to stand in this place, to work for the people we represent and to also, potentially, make a mark on the nation in our own individual ways and, in spite of what people see on the TV, to find ways to work with people that we would not normally work with. Differences of view, strength of feeling and a particular focus on your own passions and interests may collide with competing passions and interests of others. In this day and age, I do feel that our political and media systems tend to value division and put more focus on disharmony because, let's face it, it makes for interesting news. I am one person who would certainly hope that when people reflect on my time here they do not reflect too unkindly, and I hope that they reflect on the fact that I have tried to find ways in which to work with others of whatever political view, because I think it is incumbent on us to find a way to do that. In doing so you want to be able to put your best foot forward with the electorate that has given you that terrific chance to represent them. In the broader experience of life in Western Sydney, I certainly recognise the people across Mount Druitt, Blacktown, Marsden Park, Blackett, Doonside, Emerton, Rooty Hill, Whalan, Shalvey—there are a stack of different suburbs—and Quakers Hill. There are so many great suburbs. For those that I have omitted, please do not read too much into that. All the people that live in those suburbs are hardworking and industrious and do their best to get ahead. The same is true for people in other suburbs across Western Sydney, so it is a pleasure to represent those who put in so much. They do so in their workplaces. They do tremendous work volunteering, in organising so many wonderful events and in being part of community groups and clubs that all add to the fabric of the neighbourhoods that make up the Chifley electorate. But it does frustrate me—it does, I suspect, fire up a sense of indignation—that sometimes people in our area tend to get overlooked and stereotyped. I think that it is important that governments should, and I certainly think that governments always can, do more to help out and combine with the efforts of people on the ground in our area.

I find that Sydney is a city of two halves: the east and the west—and often it is the east making decisions about how the west lives. People say that that is some sort of unnecessary division in Sydney. Clearly the people that are uncomfortable with that observation are the ones who are uncomfortable with the reality that it is the case that decisions are made on the other side of town. The other side of town does not necessarily have to contend with clogged roads that are always tolled; schools that are becoming run down; feeling the ignominy of being put on some of the worst backlogs for school maintenance that are around; overburdened hospitals; overcapacity on train services and facilities around those train stations that basically make them less attractive to use and therefore push people onto already clogged roads.

I will use a local example of how Western Sydney gets the raw end of the deal and how that impacts on people's lives. Once the M7 motorway was opened disused land in the north of the electorate that I represent, in Marsden Park, suddenly became fertile for development, and the Sydney Business Park was established. I have spoken in this place many times about some of the great work happening there. It was exciting to have large, new businesses move into Chifley—big players coming in to our electorate. But what often happens is that businesses move in, but the job opportunities go to people outside that area. So, the managers of the business park and the developers, to their very great credit, agreed to get as many locals as possible into new jobs, with a focus on people currently out of work. They worked with a number of local not-for-profit organisations to identify local talent, train them up and make sure they were job ready to take those jobs.

The program was very successful. The majority of more than 300 jobs, for instance, at the massive new IKEA store in that park took on local applicants—about 75 per cent, I am led to believe. The not-for-profits specifically targeted the unemployed and engaged with organisations working with students struggling at school. But, when it came to continuing this process, they hit a hurdle. They put a modest proposal together to this federal government to help fund the nonprofits to keep training young people in our area and give them support to be job ready. They were denied funding. So we have a government that says it wants to reassess the way it is providing welfare in this country and make sure that it actually invests now to avoid people being stuck on welfare later, but when a proposal lands on their lap to do just that, they reject the proposal. Denying funding to Marist Youth Care was, I think, a massive tragedy. But this also highlights the fact that this government is all talk and no action when it comes to getting people off welfare to work.

Mr Wood interjecting—

It is hard to be nice, Member for La Trobe, when you do try to do the things on the ground in your local area and you do not get support from the government who you believe, based on their own outward rhetoric, would support this type of activity but do not. So it is hard to just sit here. I refuse to remain quiet—I do not apologise for that—and I will raise these types of things in my address-in-reply.

The other thing is penalty rates. Of the people who do have work in our area, I have 10,224 people who are likely to be affected by the decision to move ahead with cutting penalty rates. In an era where there is underemployment and people feel like they are not working enough and where they feel like, for instance, their wages are not growing fast enough—it is not a feeling; it is the fact that they are—those people who live between Mount Druitt and Blacktown now have to contend with the prospect of losing 77 bucks a week as a pay cut. In some cases, people argue that this will be good for jobs, but, as someone pointed out to me, in the hospitality sector the job growth there is in double digits. So it is not like the current arrangements have prevented people from being employed in that sector. A significant number of people will now be stressing about how to balance their budget. I know that in my electorate and across Western Sydney 77 bucks is a big deal. It is fuel in the car or, as the Leader of the Opposition pointed out, it could be the case of whether or not you are able to buy a new pair of shoes for your primary-school child. It is a big deal.

Talking of schools, I think one of the ways people in Western Sydney are being let down right now is a failure to invest in their future, with a government at the federal level that are not committing to the full needs-based schools funding program they signed up to before the 2013 election. They said that they were on a unity ticket, and, as soon as they got in, that ticket was torn apart. Chifley is going to miss out on $37 million in local schools funding. It is one of the biggest keys for people in my area to get ahead. People from very modest backgrounds are being denied the chance to go on and do great things because we are not investing in them enough in schools. Needs-based funding makes a difference in my area, and I hear this when I visit schools, for example, on presentation days. I remember when I went to Crawford Public School last year they talked about how the addition of a maths teacher had made a huge difference to the outcome and the performance of young people in that school. It makes a difference. Directing extra resources based on socioeconomic disadvantage is a real key to giving kids what they need, and it gives teachers and school staff the extra support they need to help improve results. So I think that is a big deal, and it is certainly something that I intend to continue to raise during the course of this parliament.

Another thing about schools is that, if the federal government denies school funding in one area, it cascades to through to another. In this case, state governments that feel they are not getting the funding support then look at targets to cut funding from. One of them is maintenance in local schools. There is a backlog in maintenance in schools across Mount Druitt and Blacktown that is worth millions of dollars. Some Chifley college campuses have had a backlog of over a million dollars each. Rooty Hill High School needed over $700,000 to catch up on their repairs. We are talking about basic work, like fixing torn carpet, replacing broken windows, fixing toilets, replacing guttering and repairing footpaths. Children who go to run-down schools are made to feel like their school is second rate. That should not happen. I will continue to raise that matter as well.

Infrastructure is a big deal for Western Sydney. It is one of the massive things that is a bugbear for people across our region. After having paid our fair share of tolls on one of the critical motorways, the M4, we are now looking at a state Liberal government putting tolls back on the M4. It is a horrible decision. People in Western Sydney know how grindingly, frustratingly slow the M4 is. A minor respite was the fact that they no longer had to pay tolls for the fact that they were sitting in congestion. Now they will not be left with just a slow motor way; they will be charged again, thanks to the premiers from the east of Sydney. Again, east v west. The biggest joke being played on Western Sydney residents is that one of the people supposedly standing up for them in state parliament is now out their way. Stuart Ayres, recently named Minister for Western Sydney, is 'minister for the tolls' more like it. People out our way are already paying by having to spend invaluable time away from family through delays, and now they have got to pay a toll for it.

Talking of motorways, there is the M9. This is a massive road that should be built but is not being built; it is not being funded. I hear all sorts of talk about creating jobs for Western Sydney and how investment in the south-west will make a difference. There is no investment being made in this toll road or in this motorway, the M9. It will make a huge difference between the M7 and the M9 in opening up lands for economic and employment growth development—and it is not being done. It is time the state and federal governments bit the bullet, secured the land and started drafting plans. We have seen how the M7 is on locked-in land for new businesses. Businesses are looking for better access. They are looking for opportunity, and the M9 is a project that will help them invest. I intend to keep raising this matter, again, through this term of parliament. This road needs to be built because the jobs and the economic activity flowing from it will be huge.

Talking of infrastructure, I think much of the talk about future of rail in Western Sydney has focused on what sorts of connections should be made to that horrible idea of building an airport in Western Sydney or whether the CBD of Parramatta is right for fast rail. But most Western Sydney residents would see an improvement in another project: fix the western line—do it. Either duplicate it or put more regular, faster trains on it.

It is 2017 and people should not have to spend almost as long on the western line to get to the city for work as commuters did back in the days of the red rattlers. This is especially true on the stretch from Blacktown to Richmond. That line runs through the heart of the north-west growth sector and is going to get busier and busier. And, by the way, we need parking stations that do not see lines and lines of street-based parking, because people cannot get a park close to a railway station and be encouraged onto public transport. This has to be fixed too.

New estates are isolated without public transport in our area. The problem with poor infrastructure, as people across Chifley and Western Sydney know all too well, is new estates springing up across the region are underserved. In Marsden Park I have seen tens of thousands of new homes either being built or in the pipeline to be built. How many new highways are being built to get to and from these suburbs? Very few. Making one-lane roads two-lane roads is not necessarily going to cut it. They are already full and the estates are not even done yet. We are not even talking about the schools going in. The rail services need to be sped up. Hospital services and healthcare services are required to support that population.

One of the great levellers, besides education—which I mentioned earlier—is technology. People in Western Sydney were looking forward to better internet speeds with the announcement of the National Broadband Network. It is not just about numbers; fast and reliable internet does do a lot to reduce the tyranny of distance and it would allow more people in my electorate to work from home or stagger their work times and ease the impact on roads. It is not insignificant. It would also help many small businesses do more without feeling the pressure to relocate to places that are better served.

Unfortunately, Malcolm Turnbull has stuffed up the NBN rollout. It is overdue, over budget and underserving. It is not going to be fast or reliable. We have heard that some suburbs in the electorate of Chifley are going to be connected by 2019—if they are lucky—and some of them will be using substandard technology, such as what is delivered through cable broadband. It is not good enough. The Prime Minister is not Santa Clause; he is the anti-Clause. He certainly made this big deal about faster broadband and has failed to deliver. He has stolen the gift that people were expecting right from underneath their noses.

The same person, Malcolm Turnbull, along with his Assistant Minister for Cities, launched the Western Sydney deal. Whereabouts? In Redfern—over 35 kilometres from Western Sydney. What a great plan! It was 50 kilometres from Mount Druitt. What a mockery that a plan that has very little detail to it gets launched outside the region and has very little impact on the region it is supposed to help! The only thing that they can point to in that plan is the development of an airport that I think will become a white elephant in time. Frankly, you are not going to have the majors moving out there, you are not going to have the support of it, and governments of respective sides of politics are going to be pumping money into that facility for years to come—instead of putting money into, for example, better health care.

Mt Druitt Hospital needs to be significantly upgraded to meet the growth of the region. Then there is Nepean Hospital, one of the most stressed hospitals in the state, right in our backyard in Western Sydney—again a victim of failed funding by the federal and state Liberal government. Mt Druitt Hospital lost a cardiac ward under the Baird government through a so-called relocation—we did not lose it; it was relocated. It was a cut in an area where a lot of people suffer from heart disease. It is just wrong to put that type of impact on people. The administrative trick of putting Mt Druitt Hospital under a banner with Blacktown Hospital has not hidden the fact that services and capability have been reduced. It is wrong. There are fewer beds and there is less ability to treat people coming through the front door.

It drives me nuts to see that health, roads, schools and broadband are all underfunded, yet money can be found for an airport—$8 billion worth, not being directed into our region. This airport will suck up money from federal budgets for years to come. Watch every single federal budget from hereon in. When they talk about the spend in Western Sydney, it is all going to south-western Sydney. That $8 billion could build five to 10 hospitals; it could hire 70,000 graduate teachers; it could go towards speeding up the Western Rail Line. It could go towards connecting infrastructure into those new estates that are being build right on our doorstep. It is just not happening. I just think it is wrong. As I said in an earlier speech: the things we need, we do not get and the things we do not ask for are lumped on us. I think that is frankly a crime and should not be tolerated. That is why Western Sydney MPs are speaking up more and more on this.

As I said at the start of my address, I was very grateful for the opportunity to be elected. As we all know as members of parliament—there will be some MPs who think it is by the power of the individual personality—the reality is we have a lot of people who support us to get there, be it family, friends and, importantly, the people who work with us, who either volunteer or are in our office. I just wanted to thank, in the last campaign, people like Nicole Seniloliand Rosanna Maccarone. I also wanted to thank Mel Mahmutovic, Kara Hinesley and Brad Bunting. There were a lot of people who helped out of my office in particular: my FEC, Gayle Barbagallo, and also Geeth Geeganage, who is a CFEC secretary and who also helped out in the campaign as campaign director. I thank all the people who staffed the booths and the members of the local Labor Party branches who put in so much.

It was a tremendous result off the back of a huge performance by opposition leader Bill Shorten and the entire Labor team. It has reflected the work of some my colleagues here, such as the member for Corio, who has been a longstanding member of this place. I also welcome the member for Bass as well. I am seeing many of the class of 2016 come in, who in a short space of time are clearly making a mark for themselves and making a massive contribution to the national parliament. We all feel very strongly about the special opportunity to be able to serve in this place. I know Madam Deputy Speaker Vamvakinou speaks up very strongly for multicultural communities across our nation. The Labor team is full of ideas and full of energy, wishing to put all of that forward in this term of parliament to be in a position to take government at the next election and to make a meaningful difference to communities across this great nation. I thank the parliament for the opportunity to provide these words today.

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