Pat Farmer (Macarthur, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I rise to speak on the need for an integrated transport system around this country. At the moment, and this is the way it has stood for such a long period of time, we have various forms of government—whether they be local councils, state governments or the federal government—doing their own hotchpotch deals from one place to another and things are not being integrated very well. Let me elaborate on that. I would like to start off with railway stations, and particularly railway stations in New South Wales. We see a great need for secure parking spots.

The state of New South Wales is running into debt as a result of poor attendance on the trains. When you ask people why they do not catch the trains in New South Wales, they tell you that it is because they are dirty, they are covered in graffiti, they do not run on time, their services are irregular and they are quite often cancelled with no notice whatsoever. My answer to all of this is that we need to make parking at railway stations available to everybody. This should be done by private enterprise rather than by the government.

The government in New South Wales are saying that they are broke, they have no money, they have spent all the taxpayers’ money and they have nothing left to improve services. I say to them that they can make some money from selling the spaces above the railway stations to shopping centres. They could sell off these spaces to the 7-Eleven, Woolworths and Magic stores, or any number of other stores. Car parks at railway stations could provide facilities for people to get fuel for their motor vehicles and, as a result, the car parks would be secure and well lit.

If you have children, the first thing you think of when you get off a train is that you need a clean, safe toilet that they can go to. You also need somewhere that you can pick up a loaf of bread, a pint of milk or maybe a newspaper. These facilities could be made available at stations. You also need clean, safe and secure parking areas, and so you would need something like a boom gate, a security officer and the area to be well lit. All of this could be achieved if these areas were sold off to private enterprise and if the railway system in New South Wales were privatised. I would like to see an integrated approach to transport right across the board.

Another aspect that I would like to pick up on is 40 kilometre an hour speed zones around schools in New South Wales. Quite often, there are three or six lanes across the front entrances of those schools located near a main road. It is absolutely ridiculous that the entrances to these schools are located near the main road. In these areas fences with sound barriers should be put up to prevent not only noise from entering the schools but also kids from kicking balls onto the road, which they might chase and run the risk of being hit by a car. When cars have to drop down to 40 kilometres an hour in these areas, the traffic is slowed down dramatically.

The school on Narellan Road in my electorate is a classic example. The school is one kilometre from the main road, yet it has a 40 kilometre an hour speed zone. There are other smaller roads and cul-de-sacs from which the school could be entered so that children could be picked up and dropped off. Instead, traffic is inconvenienced. It has to slow down to a ridiculous pace, and this creates an absolute nightmare every single morning and afternoon. I understand that we need safety measures in some areas where schools have only one entrance, but I am asking for some common sense to prevail in this instance.

I am asking for an integrated approach to transport where we look at not only the pedestrians but also the drivers, the buses, the trains and the parking at major facilities such as airports, schools and hospitals which we need to get to and from. We need to integrate these services much better. I am calling on the federal government to talk to its state counterparts so that we can get some dialogue going on all of this.