Jackie Kelly (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is delightful to get the call from you Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, especially following the member for Fowler, who represents an electorate adjacent to my area. It is quite amazing: I have very happily represented the people of Lindsay for the last 10 years in this parliament. Often those on the other side throw stones, but I keep getting re-elected. I suppose that says that I do a good job in the representation of the people of Lindsay and the people of Western Sydney and that they like what we do.

This government has been at the forefront of all sorts of reform—gun reform, waterfront reform and tax reform, abolishing the wholesale sales tax system and introducing a goods and services across-the-board tax. We have seen superannuation reform and now we are seeing labour market reform—all while members, like the member for Fowler, go running around like Henny Penny saying repeatedly, ‘The sky is falling in.’ The sky has not fallen in.

After people in my electorate had heard from the member for Fowler and her colleagues about the terrible impact that this GST would have—it was going to be terrible—they came to my office saying, ‘I won’t be able to afford to eat.’ These constituents were genuine and in tears saying, ‘Love your government, love what you’ve done, but I won’t be able to afford to eat.’ As can be said in this current debate, it did not come to pass. The member for Fowler, when she talks about people in her electorate who are unemployed, should be aware that I have had people in my office, genuine people, who listen to what she says—goodness knows why—who say, ‘But, Jackie, we’re going to be working for 2c an hour and we won’t be able to afford our mortgage.’ All I can say to them is, ‘You listened to them on the GST, you listened to them on superannuation, you listened to them on the waterfront and what they said did not come to pass.’ They are Henny Pennys with no credibility. They so muddy the waters that people really do not get any information from them. When push comes to shove, those in my electorate back John Howard—and that is the danger for the opposition. When it comes to who to trust in this parliament, the people of Lindsay trust John Howard. That is the risk that the opposition run in this argument—the Henny Penny member for Fowler and her ilk.

My constituents remember 1996. They remember why they elected me the first time around—double-digit interest rates and double-digit unemployment. What was the unemployment rate in 1996 in Fowler? It was a lot higher than it is today. I would say that in the Fairfield area youth unemployment would have been around 30 per cent. I will go and check the 1996 figures in your electorate and I guarantee that they were probably double what they are today. Certainly, in Penrith, where I keep the council honest, we have sought and driven new businesses and the unemployment rate has gone down. The difference between Lindsay and Fowler would be that one has an active member who is interested in business and in driving outcomes and the other has a member who wants to lie back and do nothing.

Our government has paid off $96 billion in debt over the last 10 years; it has taken us 10 years to get that down. That is some $6 billion or $7 billion a year in interest payments that we no longer pay. The state government of New South Wales solely—just the state government—is about to go $17 billion into debt to pay for infrastructure that it should have been building over the last 10 years. I am speaking of infrastructure that is on time, useful, effective and on budget, not like the busway through Fairfield. Where can the unemployed catch a bus to on that busway? What an incredibly useless piece of infrastructure, on which they have spent money, which runs through the south of Sydney to the north and connects no-one. What an enormous waste of money.

The state government of New South Wales does not in believe public transport. It will not connect Parramatta and Epping; it cannot even make a case for that rail connection. It is not going to do another thing in rail. Bus services have continued to degenerate. The rail services are even further apart, even later and more costly. People in my electorate have two cars; they cannot rely on public transport. The New South Wales government blathers on about public transport, but the people in my electorate catch the car.

Let us say that the people in my electorate, which has about 45,000 homes, spend on average $100 a week—especially now—on fuel. On average, about $15 of that goes to the state in GST and excise. That is $15 a week from all of my 45,000 residences, which equals $33 million a year, that goes out of my electorate, out of my constituents’ pay cheques, to the state government in fuel taxes. Do they see it being spent on the roads in Lindsay? Not a chance. The only thing that happens on the roads in Lindsay is the federal government’s black spot funding. We have not seen $33 million worth of state government funding on our roads.

The state government will not even upgrade some serious road connections, such as the flood evacuation route at Windsor. When the state government reneged on the Warragamba Dam and said, ‘It’s too much to strengthen it and raise the wall; we’ll take the cheap option and build a spillway,’ it promised us a flood evacuation route. It said, ‘In order to save Sydney’s water supply, all you guys in Lindsay will get flooded, but you’ll be right; we’ll build this road to get you out.’ It has not even built the road. Luckily for the state government, we have an extraordinary drought happening at the moment. But the state government’s only solution to that drought is to pray for rain. It is not even a religious bunch. At least, if its members were in the National Party or Fred Nile’s party, I could believe that their prayers would have some effect. But that is the state government’s sole water policy—to pray for rain.

The state government has done nothing about any of the dams; it has welshed on those. It went for a desalination plant and then welshed on that. Now it is drilling around my electorate for aquifers that are somehow going to meet our needs. It has also welshed on the Warragamba Dam in deciding to put suction pumps lower down underneath the dam in order to get more water at the dam’s bottom that was not utilised previously.

None of these things has come to fruition. If you read the papers over the weekend, you will have seen that the state government has blown $1.8 billion in cost overruns on projects and some 230 projects have been delayed. These are roads, schools, hospitals, dam remediation, community health centres and security on ports. Security on ports? What about security on Warragamba Dam? Any old tradesman can drive up in a ute and get access to that dam. There is no security for one of our major drinking supplies.

For the Penrith railway station, the state government gave us the cheap option. There have been no upgrades on rail. The state government saved an enormous amount by putting in some shoddy half-station for Penrith. Instead of moving the ticketing booth to the top of the platform, it has left it down on the far side so that those on the north side have to travel all the way to the south side to get a ticket and then go back to board their train.

An increase in the number of beds at the Nepean Hospital has been pushed back three years. We have had an explosion in the number of people in our area, but we get one-half of the expenditure per capita that the inner city gets. The inner city gets twice as much for its hospital beds as Western Sydney gets. What is the member for Fowler doing about that? Is she saying to her state Labor colleagues, ‘Give us our fair share out in Western Sydney?’ No, she is saying: ‘Go on into the Royal North Shore. Go on into St Vincent’s, Concord and the Royal Women’s.’

Under Labor, 3,500 beds have gone from our hospital system, and the state Labor government does nothing about it. It promises on the never never, saying: ‘Yes, Nepean, we’ll give you a few extra beds for the population explosion you have had, but that will be in the next three years or in 2010. They are coming.’ Are you going to believe that? It is the same for Westmead’s bone marrow ward. Westmead is the key hospital that we all have to go to. From Katoomba to Bathurst, we come to Westmead, yet the state government has done nothing about reallocating resources to where half the population of Sydney live, and that is west of Westmead. We need some of those hospital resources. The member for Fowler says that she represents the people of Fairfield but does nothing about it.

It would not be a Jackie Kelly speech without a mention of child care. Peter Debnam gave a wonderful policy statement about what the state opposition would do on child care, and straightaway the state government tried to match it by saying, ‘We’ll now do something for child care.’ For 10 years they have let preschools wallow. A couple of the other states have done a good job in child care in preschools and have a robust preschool system. But coming into an election—again on the never never, on money he does not have—Mr Iemma has promised preschools. The New South Wales state government is not a government to be believed. At the end of the day, when push comes to shove, I urge the people of Lindsay to take their vote seriously and back whom they trust. (Time expired)

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time for the grievance debate has expired. The debate is interrupted and I put the question:

That grievances be noted.

Question agreed to.