Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The M2-F3 missing link is greatly needed in my electorate of Bradfield to relieve the severely overloaded Pennant Hills Road and the Pacific Highway, to improve journey times for those travelling between Sydney and the Central Coast and to deliver safety and amenity benefits to local residents. Pennant Hills Road is part of the designated National Highway, and it is the current link between the M2 and the F3. It is consistently one of the slowest, most unsafe and heavily trafficked arterial roads in New South Wales.

Key design principles for the F3-M2 missing link have been identified and worked on over the last decade. The 2004 study by Sinclair Knight Merz identified air quality, alternative transport options and noise impacts as the areas the community wanted to be scrutinised. The SKM study found the project is capable of delivering positive benefits in each area, including reduced noise for 94 per cent of residents and air quality improvements by removing stop-start conditions and allowing ventilation of emissions. The most recently published New South Wales government estimate of the cost of this new road is $4.75 billion, so a project of this scale is likely to require funding from the New South Wales and federal governments as well as private sector involvement.

Recently an unsolicited proposal from private motorway operator Transurban was provided to the New South Wales government for a possible F3 to M2 motorway tunnel link underneath Pennant Hills Road. This announcement does not commit either the New South Wales government or Transurban to the project, but it is encouraging that assessment of the project will now continue to a second stage, with the parties to work together over the next six months. Obviously the New South Wales government needs to carefully assess this proposal to determine if it delivers value for money.

I want to put on the record my belief that private sector involvement such as that offered by Transurban offers the potential for the F3-M2 missing link to come to reality more quickly than if it were left to be wholly funded by government. The experience with other roads in the Sydney area such as the M2 and M7 supports this belief. Unfortunately, neither New South Wales Labor nor federal Labor delivered the F3-M2 missing link. In the 2011 federal budget Labor removed from the forward budget estimates $150 million which had previously been set aside for a feasibility study at initial planning work into the F3-M2 missing link.

The Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Anthony Albanese, continues to provide a murky picture of where the government stands on this funding. In a recent radio interview following the budget, he made the vague claim that $150 million was still available for the link, although it is clear from last year's budget that it was removed from the forward estimates and where it sits in this year's budget is nowhere to be found.

I again call upon the minister to provide clarity as to whether his government is committing $150 million to the F3 to M2 link and, at the same time, I call upon the New South Wales government to assess the private sector proposal carefully and express my view that properly managed private sector involvement could deliver a more rapid outcome than if it is left solely to government.