Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In the appropriation bills, which are basically the platform for the federal budget, we had a federal government go and spruik how much money it was spending on infrastructure over a period of years when the spend won't actually be felt by communities for some years. The government talk a big game on infrastructure, but their spend will not be felt by communities for years. And, in my part of Western Sydney, people do feel the con that was referred to just a few moments ago by the member of Oxley, because there is high residential growth in greenfield areas and people know that the infrastructure has to keep pace with that growth, but they can see it failing miserably to do so. There are also many established suburbs in the electorate of Chifley where people rely on things like public transport or roads to get to work and are let down significantly by the federal government.

But it's a tag team between the federal and state governments. For a lot of infrastructure, you do need to have federal and state governments working closely together, and that's simply not the case. I have to say that I was surprised recently when, at an Australian Financial Review summit on infrastructure, the New South Wales transport minister floated the idea of resuscitating asset recycling. Asset recycling is a fancy name for the privatisation of state assets which then get used to fund infrastructure instead of governments doing it themselves. The New South Wales minister was urging the federal Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, to embrace asset recycling again. What got me was not just that a lot of people know that privatisation effectively rips off communities, because all it sees is a transfer of public assets through the creation of private wealth for organisations that do not maintain the same standards or commitment to local service, but that Andrew Constance, the New South Wales transport minister, who I think takes the prize for being one of the most out-of-touch ministers in the country—and that is a highly contested field—said:

… federal government needed to take a bolder approach to reducing urban congestion—

So get someone else to do their work—

than getting involved in small-scale projects such as commuter car parks—

which he said should be left to state and local governments. So the New South Wales transport minister believes that state governments should be responsible for what he calls small-scale projects. Then you look at his record. He can't do it. He doesn't do it. On public transport, where there are upgrades needed, yesterday in the House I spoke about the poor bloke from Doonside who had his ribs smashed when his mobility scooter lost control down one of these long ramps at an old railway station, in Doonside in Western Sydney. We've been campaigning for ages to get lifts in to help the disabled and elderly access public transport. The New South Wales transport minister reckons that small-scale projects should be left to the state government. For the entire time of this state Liberal government being in power, they have refused to fund this upgrade. The minister tells the federal government: 'Get out of these small projects. We'll do it.' And then, when you rely on the state government to do it, they don't do it.

Let's look at other areas in the Chifley electorate where people have been let down. A busway was supposed to be connecting the suburb of Bidwill, in my area, to a booming industrial estate called the Sydney Business Park that is creating roughly 60,000 direct and indirect jobs. There are a lot of people in Bidwill who have cars. A lot don't. They rely on public transport and buses to get them where they're going. There is a high rate of unemployment in that area—in some cases, double or triple the national average. Being able to connect people in suburbs where they want jobs to suburbs that are providing jobs is important. We don't even have a busway connecting up from Luxford Road through to the Sydney Business Park. Why? Because the state government hasn't got its act together to get that busway created. The easement is there. It's been talked about. We're still waiting for it to occur.

In the meantime, Richmond Road, which runs to the north of Sydney Business Park, congests and congests and congests because, again, we do not have the commitment to provide other infrastructure, like an M9 that would run parallel to the M7 and A9 to take some of the pressure off our area, where 150,000 residents will be moving in. Again, the state government are letting people down. They are not putting in the investment but are telling the federal government, 'Get out of small-scale projects, because we can do them,' and then not doing them themselves.

In the south, commuters on Sydney's busiest rail lines are regularly unable to get home on time during the evening peak on weekdays. Particularly on the Western Line, especially at that point between Penrith and Parramatta, people find that, during the evening peaks on three out of five weekdays, the trains do not meet their performance targets. They don't meet them whatsoever. There is no plan to improve the performance or ease the congestion on the Western Line. No-one is talking about it.

We have a state government saying they'll build a Metro. I'll give them credit. The New South Wales government have done a great job on the Metro Northwest. I doubted, but I stand corrected. They've done a really good job on it. It is a great rail line. They are looking to extend that rail line in south-western Sydney, but purely to connect the airport to Parramatta. A whole swathe of people, from Penrith through to Parramatta, are forced to catch a rail line that is running late, does not perform and is not being upgraded to deal with the needs of people who want to get to work on time and don't want to be crammed like sardines or be forced to used relics of railway stations. The New South Wales government will upgrade railway stations in marginal seats or closer to the city but fail to meet the needs of Western Sydney residents in areas like Doonside, because they're not rich enough or they're not close enough to a marginal seat close to the city. This is an unacceptable way to make investments in infrastructure. As I said, that western rail line needs a massive upgrade. We do not need to see billions of dollars poured into an alternative rail line that connects Parramatta to the Western Sydney Airport or have the rail line going from the south connecting up to St Marys just funnelling more people in. I had sneering from Sydney media when I said one of the big problems with the Western Sydney Airport would be that, if infrastructure wasn't invested in, it would just fuel more congestion in the area. When I first raised this, about four or five years ago, you could literally hear the sneers from people, but more and more we are finding that congestion on Sydney's roads and in our major capital cities is increasing phenomenally. Even this week it was suggested there's an increase in congestion and delays of between 60 and 70 per cent. This is a serious problem.

MPs in the regions try to raise these issues and are ignored by Sydney media. I regret to say The Sydney Morning Herald and TheDaily Telegraph continually ignore the needs of Western Sydney on these vital bread-and-butter issues of trying to make sure that infrastructure is keeping pace with the people in our area, largely because most journalists on these papers live in the eastern suburbs. They don't live close to the heart of the action. These journalists have no concept of the types of pressures that are put on people living in the outer regions of our major capital cities. It's a disgrace. When you try to get these things mentioned, they don't do it. I notice the upgrades to the lifts in Redfern in Sydney get massive coverage, but if you go out 40 minutes or so to the outer regions, there's nothing. I'm sure there are representatives in this place, including the Deputy Speaker or other people, regardless of politics, who would find that our media is increasingly inner-city focused and does not necessarily represent the concerns of the people living in our outer suburbs or in regional Australia who are struggling to get resources or to see the infrastructure actually meet their needs. That is wrong. It is simply wrong.

So in our area, as I said, we need to see an investment in public transport that makes sure people get there on time and are not in crowded services themselves, and that roadways are upgraded to deal with this growth. A lot of people like to think that we'll create the 30-minute city. I know there have been arguments for that, and that would be terrific. The reality is it's a long way off. We don't necessarily see it in our part of Sydney. The reality is that most of the jobs in most capital cities get generated closer to the CBDs, and you do need to have effective links. You are simply going to take the steam off the growth by maybe getting some jobs put into local areas. The reality is, as has been found by groups like the Grattan Institute, the closer it is to the CBD, the more you will see people gravitate towards it. We need to not have governments defer investment because they've got some pipedream that they're going to create the 30-minute city and then do nothing to actually invest in it.

So priorities are clear. We need to see decongestion of the western line. We need to see the opening up of new public transport routes, like I said, for example, between Bidwill and the Sydney Business Park industrial estates that are creating jobs to allow the people in our areas—the machine operators, the drivers, the clerical assistants—who want to be able to get from suburbs like Bidwill and Shalvey to those jobs. We need to see the upgrade of public transport infrastructure as well so that we have functioning lifts in places like Doonside. We need to see investment in the M9 motorway that will run parallel to the M7. We need to see the use of the spare capacity on the M7, opening up public transport options in the median areas between the two carriageways on that motorway. Why isn't that being done? There are bottlenecks, for example, where the M7 and the M2 join, where we want to see people be able to get onto Windsor Road more smoothly. That type of stuff needs to be fixed up as well. We need to see metro services that connect existing suburbs rather than create huge new investments in areas where people won't necessarily see the same benefit.

The other thing I'd urge my party to do in the review of election policies that were taken to the last election is to reconsider the $3 billion that was going to be extended to the New South Wales government to invest in what was called the Sydney West Metro Project. Syd West was going to take people from the CBD to Parramatta. Western Sydney has grown so much that Parramatta, as I jokingly say, is in the eastern suburbs of Western Sydney now. Calling it the 'Syd West project' is not, in any shape or form, going to cut it. At the federal level, $3 billion is being provided to improve the connectivity between Parramatta and East Sydney. That $3 billion should be invested in creating a metro extension from Parramatta to Penrith to help people be able to travel there easier.

There are things that can be done where the federal and state governments can work closer together. But where we don't see a state government stumping up, why should we have a federal government leaving it to supporting the privatisation of assets just to fund this infrastructure? If the federal government reckons it's got $100 billion invested in projects, why aren't we seeing that investment actually impact on people now in this term of parliament and getting things happening? In my part of the world, I will not only stand up for our areas to ensure that, as I said, public transport and private transport keeps pace with growth, but I will also make sure that people who are keen to have jobs, particularly those who want to be able to rely on public transport to get to those jobs, can do so, and do so much better.

Finally, if I can say to the Greater Sydney Commission: stop spending a lot of time trying to come up with fancy catchphrases for different parts of the city. There's the three cities proposal that they've talked about, and they've described our part of Sydney as 'part of the central city initiative'. No-one in Western Sydney thinks that they're part of a central city whatsoever. Instead of spending time on logos and catchphrases, why don't they actually make sure that they're directing the attention for infrastructure investment in parts of Western Sydney and north-west Sydney? There are 150,000 people moving in. The government can't get the trains, the roads or the buses working in the way that they should. For example, I know that the residents in Marsden Park have been saying that the bus connections are just a joke when it comes to getting them to the public transport that they need. We need to have that investment. We need to have it now. We don't need spin. We need substance to deliver better communities in our part of Western Sydney.

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