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

I want to begin by quoting a Sydney Morning Herald article from 10 July. It said:

Commuters on Sydney's busiest rail lines are regularly unable to get home on time during the evening peak on weekdays …

It goes on:

Trains on the T1 Western—one of the most heavily patronised … did not meet on-time performance targets during the evening peaks on three out of five weekdays in the 12 months to early July.

That means that for three out of every five working days residents in the electorate that I represent are late home. They are late home after being crammed, at the start of the day, on trains that go from Western Sydney into the city, and they will stand for extended periods of time, crammed like sardines on that rail line.

And what is the solution? What has been the thinking of the state government or the federal government to alleviate that type of problem? When the federal government eventually got round to asking state governments, 'Tell us what your projects are,' the state government nominated two projects: (1) the $20 billion Sydney Metro West project from the CBD to Parramatta and (2) the rail line from St Mary's to the airport, which will also cost an incredible amount of money—probably around $10 billion—on top of that. But there is nothing, absolutely nothing, about federal and state governments working on investing on the western expressway or getting rid of congestion on that rail line by opening it up.

Previous Labor governments have suggested that by making some investment in that T1 line, opening up corridors there, you could actually free up transport or train travel for people going into the city. At that point in time it didn't cost $20 billion or $10 billion—it wasn't even $1 billion; at that point in time it would cost $500 million to invest in freeing up congested rail lines for Western Sydney residents, particularly those travelling from Penrith, through Mount Druitt, through Blacktown and on into the city. It was going to cost $500 million to create the western expressway. We've seen nothing about that. In fact, all we have seen is this focus on the Sydney Metro West. While I get that some people will champion that, that will not alleviate the travel time and the congestion that are being experienced by people from electorates like the one I represent who are travelling from Penrith through to Parramatta.

If people don't want to use a rail line and want to use a roadway, they'll have to fork out. I've estimated that people who use tollways to travel from my part of Western Sydney through to the city, if they're travelling by road every single day, will pay on average $9,000 a year, just to get to the city, because they're using tolls. Sydney is the most tolled city in the country. Every time you put an announcement or an idea forward for another motorway in Sydney, it's got to have a toll fixture on it. Most people in Western Sydney are tolled to their back teeth and they cannot afford another one.

The next big motorway that should be built is the M9, running parallel to the M7, but there's no planning on that. Why? Because the state government is more concerned about the politics of how it has upset its own voters in north-western Sydney as opposed to thinking longer term about what's needed to improve travel in Western Sydney. If you are driving from Mount Druitt to Parramatta in the morning and you go on to Google Maps, you'll just see a red line—congestion. It's estimated there is an extra 30 minutes on top of travel time from Mount Druitt to Parramatta because there's been no investment in the roadway. When there was investment, as part of WestConnex, the coalition put tolls back on that road, which had been paid off. So now people try to get off at Parramatta to avoid paying the toll, and this creates a massive congestion headache.

We need serious, long-term investment being made to move people either on roads or on rail or on buses. We aren't going to get it with advertising campaigns or political spin. It takes the hard yards—the financing and the thinking about what's required to make life easier for people in Western Sydney.

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