Julia Irwin (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last Saturday a rally was held in Cabramatta in my electorate of Fowler to voice community concerns about the impact on local residents and businesses of the proposed southern Sydney freight line. When the southern Sydney freight line was first proposed, I am sure the Australian Rail Track Corporation thought that it would be a simple matter to push their design through and that there would be few objections. But, since the proposed design has been made public, it is now quite obvious that the track will cause serious noise and vibration problems for nearby residents.

We know that there needs to be a freight line but we have a right to expect that the line will have the smallest impact on our community. We want to see effective measures to reduce the levels of noise from trains passing every half hour in the middle of the night, but we do not want huge walls to scar our streetscape, as the design proposes—a sound wall up to 10 metres high in parts. It is an ugly wall stretching for kilometres along the track and visually cutting communities in half, a wall that will be a magnet for graffiti and will soon become an eyesore. But the worst effect of the line would be that it cuts the commercial centre of Cabramatta in half. As a community in Cabramatta we have worked hard in recent years to overcome problems of crime and drug abuse. We do not want to see our community cut in half by that huge wall. We have a thriving commercial centre with great potential for further development but this design will make it impossible to build the Cabramatta we all want to see now and for future generations.

We are not saying no to the line but we are saying that we want a real say and a fair say in how it is built. The final design will need to address the problems of noise and vibration and it should have the smallest impact on our streets. That will cost quite a bit of money but the way it is being presented to us at the moment, the cost will be born by the residents and businesses close to the line. The federal government just wants to ignore the people of Fairfield. For nearly a year I have been seeking a meeting with the federal transport minister together with representatives of Fairfield City Council but he has not got the guts to meet with me face to face on this important issue. The minister just wants to hide behind his bureaucrats and pretend that there are no problems with the freight line. They just want us to go away and when the freight line is built they will say that it is too late to do anything about it.

Fairfield City Council has proposed lowering the rail bed at Cabramatta station to avoid ugly and ineffective noise walls and has listed other impacts, including traffic, closed-circuit TV security cameras, which are at present in operation, landscaping and flooding. In other areas we have seen governments introduce measures to reduce the adverse impacts of developments. But the proposed design by the Rail Track Corporation does not go near enough to satisfying even the basic requirements of residents and businesses. What is needed is a complete redesign of the project.

It is not good enough for the Rail Track Corporation to just dump the line in south-western Sydney without genuine consultation with the local council and residents. Public meetings have been a sham. The bureaucrats go away and come back with nothing of any value whatsoever. Worthwhile proposals by Fairfield City Council are not being taken on board because they would increase the cost. New South Wales planning minister, Frank Sartor, is soon to report on the environmental assessment of the project, but the bad design can only be accepted or rejected. It is time for the federal transport minister to order the Australian Rail Track Corporation to go back to the drawing board and come up with a design that addresses the concerns of Fairfield City residents. We will continue to speak out until the federal government agrees to sit down with the New South Wales government and our community and give serious consideration to what we are seeking. We definitely do not want a Berlin Wall in our community—a wall that will divide our town. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.