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

FREELANDER () (): My Macarthur electorate is a great electorate, and I've lived and worked in the area for over 40 years now. My Macarthur electorate is now the biggest electorate in the country by population. We have—at last count—over 142,000 electors, and we're increasing by approximately 1,200 electors every month. Suburbs have developed that were once farms. Names that you may not have heard of before, like Willowdale, Gregory Hills, Gledswood Hills, Oran Park and Arcadian Hills, are all new suburbs full of young families with children. Unfortunately, we have a state government that has failed to provide infrastructure to these rapidly developing suburbs.

I was really happy to be with the New South Wales opposition leader, Chris Minns, the shadow education spokesperson, Prue Car, and the Labor candidate for the seat of Camden, Sally Quinnell, on Sunday for the announcement by Chris of a new high school for the Gledswood Hills area. This was a massive announcement for us because Gledswood Hills and its neighbouring suburb Gregory Hills were previously farmland that the New South Wales government allowed to be developed. Schools were promised 10 years ago, but they just haven't happened. That may not mean a lot to someone who lives in one of the inner suburbs of Sydney or Melbourne, but if you live in Gregory Hills and you want your child to go to school there you'll know that they can't. In an area that has virtually no public transport, they have to be bussed to the next suburb. That has severe impacts on families. That means that the parents have to drop the child at school and pick the child up from school at either Camden or Narellan. Children with special needs are often bussed many, many kilometres away. That has severe impacts on the family. It may mean that one parent can't work full time—that one parent has to either work only part time, work school hours or even give up work altogether.

I have been petitioning the state government for years and years to provide schools—nothing. The nearest school to Gregory Hills is Oran Park Public School. It was built for a maximum school population of 600 kids. It has 1,400 kids and 46 demountable classrooms. They've only just put in a high school, which is already oversubscribed, so many children in the suburb can't go to high school there because it's too small. There are demountables on what were supposed to be playing grounds, so the kids don't actually have areas to play on.

There are new suburbs occurring all the time, like Wilton and Appin, that just don't have the schools, the police stations, the fire stations or the health services, yet the state government has just announced a plan to put over 20,000 new houses in the area. There is no infrastructure, no public transport and no rail line. It's a long way to the one hospital in the area, in Campbelltown. There's very little in the way of other supportive health services and not enough community nurses. The police station is miles and miles away. Yet the state government turns a blind eye to this. It is disgraceful. I am really looking forward to the election of a Minns Labor government next year because Chris Minns knows the importance of providing infrastructure in these newly developing suburbs.

I'm not opposed to development. I know that people have to live somewhere. I know that some of these developments are quite good in terms of housing and roads, but there is no public infrastructure in terms of schools, health care and police stations and no infrastructure in terms of recreation facilities. There is very little open parkland. Housing blocks as small as 250 square metres, without a house on them, cost over half a million dollars. This is unaffordable for many people, so they have to rent. The rents have gone up a lot, and yet they have no infrastructure. It's a travesty of what development should be, and it's time for a change.

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