Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2021-2022 and the related bills before the House. I came to this place with a number of goals and objectives. One simple goal, however, that has guided me since I was first elected, is to be a voice for Macarthur and for my constituents. Being elected to the House of Representatives has been the greatest honour of my life, and the fact that my community placed their trust in me to be their voice and their advocate on the federal stage was incredibly humbling. I have been determined from day one to repay that trust, to be a voice for Macarthur and to advocate for my region's needs.

We've had some pretty good wins despite being in opposition. We've been able to get some good things done, including a number of very important social projects. I have always approached this job in a spirit of bipartisanship and through engaging with the private sector, working with the public sector and trying to bring people together. The wins that we've had—like securing funding to finally upgrade the Wedderburn bridge, which used to flood all the time, and working with the state government to fund the Shepherd centre of excellence for deaf children and their families—have been great. But my list of wants for Macarthur is very extensive, and the work has to go on.

I originally stood for public office to provide my community with a voice that would be heard across the country. I think their needs have been ignored for too long, and that includes being ignored by governments of all persuasions. On all levels, government has turned a blind eye to the needs of south-west Sydney for far too long, content with exploiting its local residents and businesses but providing little by way of investment in return. We've had massive development in Macarthur but without the infrastructure that people so desperately need. Throughout my time in office, I've observed that the coalition are content with upholding this status quo, and it's not good enough.

I'll spend a little bit of my time today again highlighting some of the needs of Macarthur residents. I have spoken before about the government's inability to consider the needs of young people, the contempt with which they've treated youth through their policies and their inaction, and their difficulties in understanding the problems that young people are facing in this incredibly complicated age. One of the other burdens the government has given us is huge debt that younger generations will be paying for a long, long time.

The budget has really not provided the support that my constituents need. In particular, in spite of the government promising infrastructure and talking big about providing support for the regions, in outer metropolitan south-west Sydney we are getting none of the infrastructure funding that we desperately need. There are major projects that are occurring in the area, such as Western Sydney airport, which is lacking in public transport from the south-west and lacking in the infrastructure that would enable my constituents to go to the airport precinct either for travel or for jobs.

There's waste on a massive scale in other areas. For example, the New South Wales state government gave Hornsby Shire Council over $70 million for a park. There's been misappropriation of taxpayers' money and a whole range of rorts, including sports rorts, council rorts and all sorts of rorts, but there is no accountability. The government's ability to provide desperately needed infrastructure such as the NBN has been compromised by their lack of commitment to providing a service in my electorate. The poorly maintained copper network is part of the reason why so many areas in Macarthur are not getting good NBN speeds.

The same man who criticised the government for spending money to stimulate growth during the GFC, which Labor managed very well, is the same man now presiding over a government that's amassing $1 trillion of debt while giving nothing to the Macarthur electorate. It continues to throw money at some taxpayers, such as billionaires, while intentionally keeping the wages of everyday Australians stagnant. This Prime Minister and this tired government have no plan to address the flatlining wages of everyday Australians, unless you're fortunate enough to be on the Forbes rich list. This is a great injustice, and it perplexes me that the government continues to get away with it at the expense of ordinary taxpayers.

Time and time again, I reiterate, they find ways to say no to my community. They say no to a desperately needed rail line. I've been pushing very hard to have the heavy rail line extended from Leppington to Western Sydney airport. This would provide not only transport for the new suburbs that are popping up around the airport—such as Willowdale, Gregory Hills, Gledswood Hills and all those other new suburbs that people have not heard of before—but also a freight link and a corridor for infrastructure such as a fuel line, the NBN et cetera. Yet this government always says no to my electorate.

They say no to a desperately needed facility to address the shortfall of specialist services catering for children in schools in my electorate. Some suburbs, in spite of having thousands and thousands of children travelling long distances to school every day, are not being provided with a school in their local neighbourhood. We have some schools in my electorate that have 30 to 40 demountable classrooms—so many demountable classrooms that they no longer have playing fields, because these classrooms are put on their playing fields. We have schools that are so overcrowded that they have more than three times the number of children that they were built for. This means that parents can't drive their children to school, because the roads can't deal with the traffic from the mums and dads dropping their kids off.

There are no funds for local sporting clubs. It's just bizarre to me that this government could fund yacht clubs and golf clubs for millionaires yet can't find the funding to provide lighting for sportsgrounds in some of the poorest suburbs in New South Wales. The government always say no to a wage rise for our workers. Stagnant wage growth is a deliberately designed tactic of this government. However, in the pandemic, billionaires have got richer.

Macarthur residents are struggling to gain access to basic infrastructure and services, even in health care. The government's ignoring their needs. With the changes the government's made to the Area of Need classifications for general practice, many of the newer suburbs in my electorate cannot find GPs willing to work there because of the lack of encouragement and lack of financial support for them. So we have new suburbs with very young families and many children who can't get general practitioners. In fact, a few weeks ago, I was rung by Alicia, a mother who has two autistic children. She was not able to find a GP to see her children, in spite of the fact that the children had epilepsy and required medication reviews.

Macarthur residents are struggling to get local jobs. They have to travel long distances and pay huge tolls on our toll roads. They are being discriminated against because of this. Sometimes their toll payments are up to $150 a week, which is a huge amount for working families. There's been a collapse of our public hospital outpatient system. Many people who have chronic illness—for instance, neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis or epilepsy—cannot be seen as outpatients at our public hospitals. They have to pay to be seen in specialists rooms, with gap fees of up to $200 or $300, which means they just don't access care, which leads to a much poorer prognosis. Yet this government ignores those inequities in health care.

I think budgets are about choices. The choices that are being made today discriminate against many residents of Macarthur. My community always shoulder their fair share of the massive burden of the government's budget, but they deserve a fair return for what they're doing. They're young working families and they deserve a return on their taxes. As I have said, some of the new suburbs lack schools. Even in those that do have schools, the schools are on such a small footprint that they do not have adequate playing areas. The government needs to make sure that everyone has equitable access to education, and my community is being denied.

Without adequate investment, our ever-growing new suburbs are doomed to remain isolated. Without adequate public transport, our roads are destined to remain congested. With a lack of local jobs, residents will continue to be forced to commute for hours and hours every day to work. That commute takes away from family time. Families need their parents with them as much as possible. It is not fair for Macarthur families. Those opposite can continue to champion their infrastructure spend, but none of it is happening in Macarthur. The refusal to invest in our community will have dire consequences into the future. Those opposite do not seem to have a grasp on the basics of equitable support for communities. People from my community are concerned about the cost of living, how to make ends meet, how to put a roof over their heads, how to put food on the table and having quality time with their family. They deserve better.

Droves and droves of young families are moving to Macarthur each year. It's one of the fastest growing electorates in the country. I see these families all the time—at shopping centres, in my office and at events—and it's clear to me that they all value quality time with their family and quality time in their local area. Macarthur residents don't want to spend hours commuting to work every day and don't want to be stuck on the M5 or along Camden Valley Way; that time would be much better spent with their families.

Macarthur is struggling very much in the area of health care. Money is being spent on a new hospital but no money is being spent on people to staff it. Those who have been able to access health care in the past are now finding longer and longer waiting lists for elective surgery and longer and longer waiting times in our emergency departments. When the already extended outpatient clinics do exist, people have huge difficulty in getting into them, with waiting times sometimes over one year.

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