Linda Burney (Barton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

Last year in July the New South Wales government opened the new M8 tunnel. It runs from Beverly Hills to St Peters. At the same time the government introduced a new toll on the M5 East. It runs from Kingsgrove and comes out just before Sydney airport. Both are major pieces of infrastructure in Barton.

The New South Wales government promised that the M8 would double the capacity on one of Sydney's most congested routes. It argued that a toll on the M5 tunnel, never tolled before, was now justified for improving travel times. What is clear to me is the opposite has happened in fact—a horrible tax on motorists and families living in the area. For a car travelling on the M5 East from Kingsgrove to Arncliffe, motorists are now slapped with a $7.23 toll to use an old road each way. This toll will increase each year every year by four per cent. This is an incredible burden on the people of the electorate. A story from a resident in my electorate is telling: in January 2020, before the introduction of the M5 and M8 east toll, he paid $28.62. He now pays $173.80. That's an increase of 500 per cent.

My colleagues in the state parliament filed a petition to scrap this unfair toll. It attracted nearly 20,000 signatures. But tolls have an impact that is more than just the back pocket. Thousands of cars and trucks are now piling up on busy thoroughfares within the electorate—Stoney Creek Road, King Georges Road and Bexley Road. These roads are now full of motorists who refuse to pay the toll. This project was designed to reduce the surface traffic on local roads. It has done anything but.

Jeff Tullock runs the local Bexley chamber of commerce and tells me that the change to introduce clearways on Bexley Road has hurt businesses by reducing parking. The high level of noise, vibrations, fumes and pollution are just the beginning. This extends right into the night. Truck drivers get on their horns, and this does not help things. There is such an increase in side traffic.

I note the hard work of my colleagues in the New South Wales parliament who have been fighting so hard to raise this issue: Anoulack Chanthivong, the member for Macquarie Fields; Paul Lynch the member for Liverpool; John Graham MLC, Shadow Minister for Roads; Chris Minns, our local member for Kogarah and the Shadow Minister for Transport. I would also like to acknowledge my colleague here in the federal parliament, the member for Werriwa, for her advocacy on this issue.

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