Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House notes that:

(1) the Government is delivering on its promise to build a stronger Australia with its $1.5 billion commitment to the WestConnex project in Sydney;

(2) WestConnex is part of a long term vision for Sydney's future and is needed to cater for the additional 1.3 million people calling it home over the next 20 years;

(3) the 33 kilometre motorway linking Sydney's west and south-west with the CBD, Sydney Airport and Port Botany, will return some $20 billion to the NSW economy; and

(4) the project will create thousands of jobs including new apprenticeships.

As I made my way around the electorate of Reid over the past 18 months, I met many people and had many conversations. There were not many conversations that at some stage did not turn to local traffic—both neighbourhood streets and, of course, Parramatta Road. In Reid you will find the end of the M4 Motorway. We are the proverbial 'end of the line'. The roads that once belonged to us and our families are now home to traffic 'rat running' in an attempt to avoid Parramatta Road. The electorate of Reid has lived with the lack of vision of state and federal governments for the last 40 years.

But this was not always the case. Our forebears always intended a motorway from Sydney's greater west to the city. That is why they had retained ownership of land that would allow future governments to build it when required. In what could only be described as an act of political short-sightedness, the Wran state government sold this corridor in 1977.

When it comes to infrastructure, not only the people of Reid but all in NSW have been let down for too long. Poor infrastructure investment decisions over the past decade have contributed to a $30 billion infrastructure backlog. This has led to the poor economic performance of New South Wales compared with the rest of Australia during that time. Currently, congestion costs the New South Wales economy an estimated $5.1 billion every year or nearly $1,100 for every resident of Sydney. By 2020, the cost of congestion is expected to rise to $8.8 billion, as Sydney's population grows and travel demand increases.

Western Sydney is home to Australia's third biggest economy, and with Sydney's population expected to grow by 1.3 million people over the next 20 years, it is only going to get bigger and be more important to Australia's economic success. It deserves first-class infrastructure. With the WestConnex, it will have it. The M4, which begins at Penrith and terminates in the electorate of Reid at North Strathfield, creates unreliable travel times through the inner west to the city and the airport. As drivers reach the end of the motorway, they either head up Concord Road and turn into Gipps Street, spreading traffic through the back streets of Concord West, Concord, Five Dock and Rodd Point. Or they head down Parramatta Road, turning off at Wentworth Road, Strathfield, then through Burwood and Croydon. Our once quiet back streets—home to our children—have now become home to a large number of vehicles attempting to avoid the nightmare that is Parramatta Road.

Parramatta Road is heavily congested, with traffic speeds reduced on average to 21 kilometres per hour as trucks, vans, cars and buses fight for space on a crowded corridor interrupted by 25 sets of traffic lights. Our community in Reid has effectively been cut in half, with local residents doing all they can to stay on their side of Parramatta Road and avoiding the battle that goes on there. As a result, large sections of Parramatta Road have become an eyesore characterised by failing retail businesses, heavily-congested, polluting traffic and an absence of pedestrians. In some places all that is missing are the tumbleweeds rolling down the street.

The WestConnex is what the people of Reid are crying out for. WestConnex is the largest integrated transport and urban revitalisation project in Australia, linking Sydney's west and south-west with the CBD, the airport and port in a continuous 33-kilometre motorway that is completely free of traffic lights. WestConnex will be the trigger for urban revitalisation along the Parramatta Road corridor. Streetscapes will be beautified; green corridors and parkland added; it will be a better place to live, work and socialise.

According to experts, the WestConnex will cut forecast travel times between Parramatta and Sydney Airport by up to 40 minutes. I think this is conservative, because I, as a lifelong resident, can, like all in Reid, tell you horror stories of taking 20 minutes to travel a distance that should take two minutes. And with clearway restrictions eased on weekends, we now have the crazy situation where weekend traffic is worse than weekdays. Travel speeds have fallen to as little as 21 kilometres per hour for morning and afternoon peak periods and the M4 is congested 13 hours a day. Secondly,    bus travel times between the inner west and the CBD will be halved; again , I believe, this is very conservative estimate. Thirdly, it will create 10,000 jobs during the construction phase, including hundreds of apprenticeships. With unemployment in double digits in Reid, especially amongst our youth, we could sure use these. Fourthly, it will bypass up to 52 sets of traffic lights.

Fifthly, it will remove 3,000 trucks a day from Parramatta Road and put them underground, leading to revitalised neighbourhoods on the surface. This is an important point, Madame Speaker: whilst there is concern about the impact the WestConnex tunnel ventilation will have on local air quality, I was amazed to attend a briefing only a few weeks ago at which an expert explained there would be a vast improvement in air quality, as trucks in particular would be driving through the tunnel at a continually higher average speed—not stopping and starting, using low gears, and spewing black smoke into the air.

Sixthly, north-south travel times across Parramatta Road for cars and public buses accessing the western rail line at Burwood and other stations will improve. This relates to the point about allowing the two halves of Reid to come back together—a situation we do not currently enjoy. Seventhly, it will provide the environment for 25,000 new jobs and 25,000 residences to be created over the next 20 years along Parramatta Road. In consultation with councils and communities, sections of the Parramatta Road corridor will be rezoned to encourage construction of new apartments and homes, commercial and retail space, recreational space, civic and government buildings. All this will result in a 20-kilometre urban revitalisation corridor developed progressively between Camperdown and Parramatta over the next 20 years. All told it is projected the WestConnex will deliver more than $20 billion in economic benefits to New South Wales, and, hopefully, we will get rid of those tumbleweeds.

This project will mean different things to different electorates at different stages of the construction. Whilst we have a responsibility to represent our electorate, we must also balance the short and the long term and govern for majorities, not minorities. One of the most common criticisms of politicians is that they have a lack of vision, that they govern by electoral cycle and find short-term issues to create political advantage, and that they seek to hold power above all else. WestConnex is the perfect example of a government not doing that.

I note with interest that I will be followed by the members for Kingsford Smith, Chifley and Parramatta. They may talk about tolls, compulsory acquisitions, moving bottlenecks, ventilation shafts, the role of public transport and a number of other things. These are issues they can play politics on. I challenge them to think about Sydney, particularly Western Sydney, when this project is finished in 10 or 20 years time and we will have an additional 1.3 million people calling our city home. With any major infrastructure project there will always be points of contention. But we must govern with long-term vision and for the needs of the many versus the needs of the few.

I applaud Prime Minister Mr Tony Abbott and Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss for taking a long-term view and working with Premier Barry O'Farrell and the New South Wales government to deliver WestConnex for the people of Reid, the people of Western Sydney and the people of New South Wales. Prime Minister Abbott went to the electorate promising us the roads of the 21st century. His first order of business the day after he was sworn in was to deliver on the promise. On behalf of the people of Reid I thank him and I commend this motion to the House.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Fiona Scott (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure that I second the motion by the member for Reid. I know this is a motion that is also close to your heart, Madam Speaker, as you have contributed much to the people of Western Sydney throughout your entire political career. WestConnex is the largest road transport project in Australia. It will provide a new way of travelling across Sydney, ensuring quick trips for commuters to the airport and Port Botany from Western Sydney. I would like to connect myself with the statements made by the honourable member for Reid and reiterate his sentiments about the disruption to his community in Strathfield, Cabarita and Canada Bay, the congestion that makes life for his community challenging every day—particularly on weekends—when getting kids to and from sport and school. I also look forward to the beautification projects for Parramatta Road, which has become an eyesore. It is about time we beautified this region and took pride in our inner west. I also reiterate my disappointment in those opposite who are determined to politicise these issues with narrow-minded small points.

Building WestConnex is proof that federal and state governments can work together and deliver better infrastructure to the people of Sydney. The Abbott government's investment in the WestConnex project is proof that we are getting serious about getting on with the job of delivering the roads of the 21st century. For too long, successive governments have shirked the responsibility of providing vital infrastructure to the people of Western Sydney. We all remember that it was the former New South Wales Premier Bob Carr who stated 'Sydney is full'. Such statements are most unhelpful to the people of my region. As an outer metropolitan electorate in the Sydney basin, we often find ourselves at the back of the queue of overcrowded infrastructure. When travelling to the city we must fight the bottlenecks of Strathfield, Concord, Homebush, Parramatta and Blacktown and then in our own region of the greater Nepean Valley. This knock-on effect of not investing in infrastructure right through Western Sydney causes great frustration to the people living in my electorate and travelling from it. I believe WestConnex is a vital brick in the road to decongesting these bottlenecks.

Every day, two-thirds of the Lindsay workforce must leave the region for employment opportunities. Our region is one of the fastest growing in Australia, and it is projected that over the next 20 years an additional half-million people will make Western Sydney their home. In essence, for the people of my region, that is akin to constructing a Canberra to the north and a Canberra to the south of Penrith. My region of Western Sydney must ready itself not only for the challenges of providing existing infrastructure to meet the demands of the current population but also for the needs of future generations. I look forward to working with the infrastructure Prime Minister not only in the master-planning process that is essential to providing the vital roads and rail demanded by the people of Western Sydney but also on providing an infrastructure pipeline crucial in meeting the future needs in connecting our regions.

I acknowledge the legacy of Prime Minister John Howard and his achievement of delivering the M7 under budget and ahead of schedule. As the M7 has already demonstrated, key roads in Western Sydney are an essential catalyst for future investment and are sure to create more local jobs. We need only look at Norwest, Erskine business park, and Dunheved Business Park and we will see the opportunities that have been created in those regions. Look also at what is happening at the Light Horse Interchange. These are exciting for the people of Western Sydney. It is about time we brought jobs to where the people live.

WestConnex will allow our local residents to bypass 52 sets of traffic lights and save 40 minutes on their trip to the city. It will, finally, connect the M5 and M4 corridors. WestConnex will enable the people of Lindsay to spend more time with their families and less time on the road. It will save businesses time and money, allowing deliveries to be received and sent more efficiently. It will give heavy vehicles real choices about how to travel across Sydney without clogging up local roads and needing to stop at countless traffic lights. Currently, we see a massive backlog in freight, with links to the airport and the port not able to cope with demand. More than half—13 hours—of any 24-hour period sees the M4 strangled, with more than 170,000 trucks and cars. This costs the state and national economies billions of dollars. Estimates put the cost to Sydney of this congestion as high as $8.8 billion by 2020. Therefore, I am pleased to note that WestConnex will return some $20 billion to the New South Wales economy. Not only will WestConnex deliver that economic benefit to New South Wales but it will help create 10,000 jobs during construction, including hundreds of apprenticeships.

The O'Farrell government breaks WestConnex into three stages. Stage 1 is the concept design from Parramatta to Homebush. The O'Farrell government has already commenced holding public information sessions along this corridor. In many cases these have been held by my very good friend the member for Penrith, the Hon. Stuart Ayres MP—it is great to be able to call him 'the honourable'. I congratulate him on his ascension into the New South Wales ministry. Stage 1 also involves widening the M4 into four lanes in each direction between Church Street, Parramatta, and Homebush Bay Drive, then further extending the M4 via a tunnel along Parramatta Road through to the City West Link at Haberfield. I am sure that that is the part that the member for Reid is very anxious to see. Clearing this bottleneck allows us in the outer suburbs of Western Sydney a huge opportunity, because it is this bottleneck that sees traffic banked back as far as St Marys every single peak hour. Work is due to commence on this in 2015.

Stage 2 focuses on the M5 east corridor, widening the M5 to four lanes in each direction between King Georges Road and Bexley Road.

David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hear, hear!

Fiona Scott (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is nice to see that the member for Banks is very excited about that. Further, there will be a six-kilometre tunnel to join this section of motorway to the St Peters area, as well as a surface link to Sydney Airport. Stage 3 will see an 8.5-metre tunnel linking stages 1 and 2 via the Camperdown area with three lanes in each direction. Together, the New South Wales and Australian governments are contributing $3.3 billion to WestConnex with the whole 33-kilometre corridor to cost around $11 billion. In addition to the motorway, urban revitalisation will take place along the Parramatta Road corridor. WestConnex will take around 3,000 trucks a day off Parramatta Road—and that will be great for Strathfield families—and put them into a tunnel allowing for around 25,000 new homes and 25,000 new jobs over the next 20 years. We are removing the burden that has been placed on Australian businesses.

I am pleased to second the motion of the member for Reid and am proud to be part of a government that will continue providing real solutions to the people of Western Sydney. I commend the motion to the House.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I speak in opposition to this motion. Labor is not opposed to the WestConnex project but we are opposed to short-term planning and political fixes, which this project and this motion appear to be. Deputy Speaker, if you drove to Sydney Airport this morning, the one thing that you could guarantee after 5.30 am is a traffic jam. On every business day, after 5.30 am in my electorate, at Kingsford Smith Airport you are guaranteed a traffic jam. Less than a kilometre away from our nation's largest and busiest airport is our nation's largest and busiest port, Port Botany. The port is currently being expanded to cater for additional shipping that will see more and more trucks on the roads around Sydney Airport and the streets of Kingsford Smith. At the moment, around Mascot train station there are 10- to 15-storey residential apartments being built, which will see additional residents move into the airport precinct and, of course, additional cars on our roads. This is putting massive pressure on the roads in my electorate of Kingsford Smith.

As I said, Labor is not opposed to the WestConnex project, but we are opposed to elements of it in its current form. In its current form, WestConnex will simply make the situation worse around pinch points in the Sydney traffic network—in particular, around Sydney Airport and Port Botany. The current proposal for WestConnex proposes exits at Canal road, at Qantas Drive and at General Holmes Drive. That will see thousands of additional vehicles come onto the roads around Sydney Airport. The people who use WestConnex from the western suburbs to come to the airport will end up on ordinary two-lane roads around the airport and the port. There is no plan as part of the WestConnex project to upgrade those important roads that feed on to the WestConnex around Sydney Airport and the port. Importantly—and the great shame about this proposal and this motion—there is no link from the WestConnex to Port Botany. There is no link at all from Foreshore Road, which goes directly onto Port Botany—the existing port and the new one—and the WestConnex project. It is one of the biggest and most important road infrastructure and planning projects in the state's history, and yet there is no link at all to the port which carries the freight that travels west on our roads. It is our nation's largest port and there is no link between WestConnex and the port, which is literally 800 metres away. It is not as if it would take a massive expansion of WestConnex to link it into the port. It is a great symbol of poor planning. And that is why we have a problem with this motion that is before the House today. Element (3) of the motion states:

(3) the 33 kilometre motorway linking Sydney's west and south-west with the CBD, Sydney Airport and Port Botany, will return some $20 billion to the NSW economy …

It does not link to Port Botany. That is the problem with the motion. The 33-kilometre motorway does not link to Port Botany. It does not link to our nation's biggest port, which sees the largest amount of freight on our roads in Sydney. In that respect, this motion is deceptive, and it is pure politics over substance.

That will see additional freight and traffic from our port. Additional traffic from the WestConnex at the airport will be deposited on the roads around Kingsford Smith; in particular, General Holmes Drive, which is the major thoroughfare that takes people from the shire—from Cronulla, Sylvania and those places—into the city, into the CBD. It is the major road, and it is getting busier and busier. Now we are going to deposit all that additional traffic from the WestConnex and the port and the airport, with no link to this road project. That is the concern that Labor has with this project and this motion.

And it is not simply Labor that is opposed to this and has these concerns. Indeed, the Australian Logistics Council, the body responsible as the voice of the transport industry in this country, has similar concerns. Michael Kilgariff, the managing director of the ALC, called for the economic benefits of the WestConnex to be maximised because, in his view, in the current proposal they are not being maximised. He said:

I appreciate that there are some significant logistical issues having the motorway run via the Port, not to mention the cost … but ideally, the ALC would have liked to have seen the motorway run further into the port area.

There you have it. That is the view of the Australian Logistics Council—those that are involved on a day-to-day basis in transport.

I said at the beginning that Labor is not opposed to the WestConnex project—indeed, Labor allocated $1.8 billion towards WestConnex in the 2013-14 budget. But we made that on certain conditions, and those conditions are that the final proposal must provide direct links to get people to the city and the freight to the port. That is an important element of any proposal. Secondly, there should be no new tolls on old roads. This proposal will toll people from the western suburbs of Sydney for using existing roads, most notably the M4. And there needs to be a finalisation of a detailed business case for assessment by Infrastructure Australia, something that is sadly lacking in this proposal and this motion that comes before the parliament.

There is nothing in this project about integration. The current proposal does not integrate with the port. That is a far cry from Labor's approach to important projects such as this when we were in government. That approach is in evidence in Labor's investment in roads and urban transport projects throughout the country. Labor doubled the road budget during our period in office. We increased it to $46.5 billion. We upgraded 7½ thousand kilometres of roads throughout the country.

The Abbott government's approach is a refusal to accept integration, a refusal to back urban transport projects, and that is the great shame about this proposal and this investment. Labor, particularly in New South Wales in terms of federal infrastructure spending, more than doubled the amount that has been invested in infrastructure projects in Australia—the largest amount in our nation's history. In financial year 2013-14, Labor injected $1.7 billion into infrastructure projects in New South Wales.

Let us look at Labor's record in government on infrastructure in New South Wales. We committed $5.5 billion to road and rail transport projects servicing Sydney over six years. They include $840 million for the northern Sydney freight line upgrade; $800 million for the Moorebank intermodal terminal, an important project that will take some of that freight off the roads around my electorate and put it on rail out to Moorebank intermodal from the port, to be transported via truck; $980 million for the southern Sydney freight line; $405 million for the F3 to M2 missing link; $300 million to upgrade the Greater Western Highway; $172 million for Port Botany rail improvements; $98 million to widen the F5 at Campbelltown; $75 million for the upgrade of Port Botany rail line; $40 million for the Port Botany upgrade program; and $1.8 billion to deliver the M4 and M5 extensions, in partnership with the New South Wales government.

That is the way that you invest in transport infrastructure, with integrated proposals, and that is why this motion must be opposed.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I stand to oppose the motion. Like my colleague from Kingsford Smith, I support the development of infrastructure in Western Sydney, but it has to be the right infrastructure. When I see motions like this before the House, I wonder how many ways the current government can be a different government from the one they said they would be in the election campaign. They said they were a government with a plan and, if this is an example of their planning capacity, it is not a very good one. They said they would be an infrastructure government and, again, if this is an example of the quality of the infrastructure planning that we will see from the government, we are not looking forward to a particularly good decade ahead as the plans they put in place in this early stage come to fruition.

The WestConnex project is a nice announcement. We in the Parramatta area and further west know that we have a fabulous piece of infrastructure in the M4, but, like many of the pieces of infrastructure in our area, it is not complete. I have said quite often in my community that one of the things we would like to see in Parramatta is a piece of our infrastructure actually finished. If you look around you can see the Parramatta to Chatswood rail line, which stops at Epping, and the current state government and this federal government are withdrawing the funding from that, so that will not be finished. It just needs to be finished—you can almost see Epping railway station from Carlingford. The line to Richmond has been doubled to Schofields but then goes single, again putting extra cars on the road through Parramatta. The M4 stops at Strathfield, and this project moves that problem elsewhere but does not solve it. You cannot get from Parramatta to Bankstown or Blacktown across Western Sydney with any great ease. Of course, the M5 needs to be widened, the M3 needs to be finished and the freight corridors, which were funded and in large part completed by the Labor government, still need to be completed. So, when you look around the area of Parramatta, you can see lots and lots of infrastructure projects that were started at some point but were never actually finished. Strangely enough, as the second CBD, Parramatta seems to be ignored in most of those infrastructure projects, as with this one.

There are three ways you can get traffic off the road—three ways you can deal with traffic congestion. You can build public transport to get the cars off the road in the first place. Again, we have seen the current state government and this federal government walk away from that in a major way in the Parramatta to Epping rail line. That project, by the way, if it had started on time would have been finished in early 2015—it would have been finished before this project even begins, and they walked away from that.

You can look at finding ways to use both sides of a road. When the member for Lindsay talked about the M4 being chockers in the morning, she is right—going into the city it is chockers, but going out of the city we have an extraordinary piece of infrastructure that can move people but is essentially empty. Using both sides of a road requires that you plan your infrastructure to move people in two directions, and I will get to some of the flaws in the design of WestConnex as it relates to Parramatta as a major CBD in a minute.

But if you are going to build a piece of infrastructure as expensive as WestConnex, as expensive as all of our major freeways, any sensible planning requires that you find ways for people to use those freeways in both directions in both the morning and the afternoon. This is about moving people from the west to the city in the morning and from the city to the west in the afternoon, and not about two-way travel at all. The third way you can do it, which is probably the most expensive way, is just to accept that there will be cars on the roads and build bigger and bigger, and fatter and fatter, roads to move them around. WesConnex attempts to do that, but it does it in a way that only moves the congestion and the bottlenecks from one place to another.

I want to get into the detail of that. Stage 1, which you heard about from the member for Lindsay, deals with the section of road from Church Street to Haberfield, the section of road from Parramatta to the beginning of the City West Link. It is a really important stretch of road. At the moment, the M4 stops at Strathfield and you end up on Parramatta Road, which is a major choke point until you get to Wattle Street, a two-lane road that starts to move a little better. As you get closer to the city it too is essentially a car park. Stage 1 widens the M4 to Strathfield. It widens the bit of the M4 that we currently have to four lanes and puts a toll on it, and it finishes that in 2019. So, between now and 2019, we will see the widening of the M4 to four lanes. It will be three lanes until you get to Parramatta and then it will be four lanes from there until you hit Strathfield, where it will go into a tunnel and back to three lanes. So that is the first new choke point—four lanes to three lanes for the tunnel, and then as you come out of the tunnel at Haberfield you go to two lanes. So it fools you into thinking, as you enter the freeway just after Parramatta, that you are on a nice road into the city, but then as more traffic joins it you go to three lanes and then as more traffic again joins it you go to two lanes. I mean, it is almost backwards from what a decent plan would be, which would actually widen the road according to the amount of traffic that is entering it.

It also creates some interesting new choke points within Parramatta. We are very critical in Parramatta of the WestConnex design because it actually ignores Parramatta completely—the second CBD is ignored completely, except that there are a couple of extra ways to get out of Parramatta. You can get out of Parramatta, heading into the city, at Bridge Road, which is already an incredible choke point. It goes over a very narrow two-lane bridge across a railway station, a major choke point that people in the area are already critical of, and turns it into a bigger choke point. It also introduces a western lane out of Church Street. Again that is a good thing but Church Street also is a car park coming through Parramatta—the only way to get there is to go through the Parramatta CBD if you want to get onto the M4 at that one—and it turns what is already a major choke point into an even bigger one.

It is also worth looking at the time frames for this. By 2019 we will have a nice wide M4 that funnels down into three lanes just as more traffic joins it after Strathfield and then down to two lanes as you approach the city. One would have to question how that is going to cause traffic to flow in a better way. It bypasses the second CBD altogether. It does not provide extra access points into Parramatta. It does not provide any encouragement for traffic to flow the other way, only from the west into the city. Again, it is an extraordinary waste of half a resource for half a day. I doubt that a business would make a decision to build such an expensive piece of infrastructure and only use half of it at any given time, when both sides are available.

Stage 2, which will be completed by 2020, deals with the M5 motorway from St Peters to the airport. Again, it is incredibly important that the M5 motorway be widened. It was on the Labor government's plans and it is quite appropriate that it be widened; it is, in fact, too narrow. But the bit between those two, from Haberfield to St Peters, will not be complete for another 10 years. So it will be 10 years before people in the west will be able to use the motorway from Parramatta, through the four lanes and the three lanes, and then through the tunnel heading around to the M5 and back to the airport. It is at least a 10-year wait for that.

Between now and then, we have what can only be described as a project which will encourage more cars onto a road before funnelling them down into narrower bits. It is a plan which ignores the second CBD. It ignores it completely. It is a plan which worsens the choke points that are already in that CBD. It essentially, in a very short period of time, will leave us with the same sort of car park morning traffic and afternoon traffic flows that we have now. It is hard to imagine this WestConnex, given the way it is designed and the way it funnels into narrower and narrower roads as it approaches the city, will do anything other than encourage more cars into the car park which is currently the M4. Without encouraging traffic to flow the other way, without finding a way to get cars off the road through a better public transport system, without investing in infrastructure which gets cars off the road, this is just going to make the situation worse.

Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is not really the politics of hope, is it, Mr Deputy Speaker, from the member for Parramatta? It is not, 'Yes, we can'; it is, 'No, we can't.' You can understand why the last Labor governments federally and in New South Wales were so atrocious on delivering infrastructure projects for metropolitan Sydney. In my electorate we were promised up to five times over a decade that the north-west rail line would be constructed. Signs went up saying, 'Coming soon: the north-west rail line.' But over 12 years those five promises were broken. It was never started. It took the election of a Liberal state government to actually start construction of a major public transport infrastructure project in Australia. The north-west rail line is a major public transport infrastructure upgrade. Over 12 years Labor did nothing in Sydney.

We also saw under the last federal government six years where not a single dollar of infrastructure money was spent in metropolitan Sydney. Nothing was done. Of course, $100,000 was put into the New South Wales state government for a study. There was $100,000 for a study on a metro line. But when the metro line was cancelled by that state government, the Commonwealth had a windfall. The money was paid back. So the only money that was allocated by the federal government for a study had to be paid back by the state government to the Commonwealth. That is the embarrassing record of Labor in office with infrastructure in the biggest city in our country. It is the biggest driver of economic activity in our country, and there were no infrastructure projects underway under Labor.

This is an excellent motion from the member for Reid, highlighting the fact that from day one the Tony Abbott government, a Liberal government, will be very different on the delivery of infrastructure in Australia. This is not about being road technicians. I question the qualifications of the member for Parramatta to tell us about her design input into the lanes or the gradients of the tunnels. I really question her input. I know we have frustrated car executives on that side who want to run car companies. They want to run airlines. They also now want to tell us about the gradients of tunnels and about lanes. Is it only me who finds this extraordinary?

We are putting in funding from the Commonwealth—actual dollars. That is what we do at a Commonwealth level. We provide the funding. The best piece of infrastructure built by a Commonwealth government in recent memory was the M7, funded by the Commonwealth under the Howard government in partnership with the state government. It is an excellent motorway. I never get a single complaint about it. People do not mind paying the toll, member for Parramatta, because they get a great service from that toll. It is unrealistic in a modern construct to expect infrastructure to be built by government without some form of user-pays charge. It is unrealistic. It is unprofessional for members of parliament to come into this House and say, 'It is possible.' Simply put, the infrastructure backlog that exists in all of our major cities around Australia is so substantial that it is unrealistic and blatantly politically flawed to come in here and suggest that there can be no user-pays input into major infrastructure projects. There needs to be, there must be and there should be. That is the reasonable way to construct the financing of this project.

We know that with the state government there will be a reasonable toll put on this motorway. It needs to happen so we can get Sydney moving again. Given everything we know about infrastructure financing in Australia, it is fantastic that we are keeping our commitment to go through with such an important project in a major city to get Sydney moving again.

Just on the weekend, you could pick up reports which showed that our city has ground to a halt. The papers are asking, 'Why does one truck hitting a tunnel stop the whole city?' The answer is, because we have relied solely on government to fund motorways and other infrastructure projects in Sydney. Design has been missing.

Coming to office as a new government with a new start, we are starting on the front foot. We are building the most important project—that is, connecting Sydney with the west, the biggest economic driver in our city: Western Sydney and its millions of people, millions of businesses, and all of the economic drivers that will make our city prosperous. We have to get it moving with a major infrastructure project. We know this will create 10,000 jobs. Of course we can get this right. We do not have to have a debate in here about the technical grading of the tunnelling, or how many lanes it needs to be; that is the opposition looking for a cause. It is just simple negativity—relentless negativity. This is the most negative opposition I have ever seen! They are relentlessly negative about everything. But the reality is that the populations of the member for Chifley's electorate, and of the member for Kingsford Smith's electorate and of the member for Parramatta's electorate will be cheering the Abbott government on as this project is commenced and as road projects actually get underway—not studies, not money allocated in the last year of the government—

Mr Husic interjecting—

And there are lots of claims over there; they say, 'on the final year of the forward estimates we put some money in'—well, we are actually putting the money in up front and getting the real construction underway. This is a fantastic motion by the member for Reid. I absolutely commend it to the House. And I say to those members opposite: please, the politics of hope—yes we can.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Reid gets breathless behind the vision of the way that those opposite are funding WestConnex. He just gets excited; he gets cheap thrills. I do not want to ask him to fill out a shopping list in case I give him a heart attack! I cannot get over the vision behind this $1.5 billion cash splash that underwrites WestConnex—it tells me that you are into cheap thrills that someone else is paying for. Because all those members opposite have their noses pressed up against the thought bubble that we will see the coalition infrastructure wish list put out on parade. It is nothing more than a sort of amateurish smudge of credibility on coalition talking points. It is not good enough. In opposition, the coalition wanted a cost-benefit analysis on a fridge opening. And now they write on the back of confetti, put up a cheer, and pat themselves on the back, and they think that is good enough—it ain't.

We set up Infrastructure Australia with a specific purpose: to de-politicise these issues. We wanted to ensure that the politics is taken out of these issues and that the independent experts are put in. Infrastructure projects from across the country are put in by state governments. We then backed those projects up with funding, after the experts had been through them—nearly $47 billion on roads nationally and $13.6 million on rail—and we saw results. I challenge the member for Mitchell when he says that in Sydney we saw no funding. We saw $5.5 billion on the road and rail transport service in Sydney over six years, including nearly $2 billion for the northern Sydney freight line and the southern Sydney freight line upgrades; $405 million for the F3 to M2 missing link; and $93 million to widen the F5 at Campbelltown that you and I no doubt drive down to get here. We also have the $300 million to upgrade the Great Western Highway and $300 million for Port Botany rail improvements and associated upgrades. Depoliticised, independent, evidence-based, fully-funded quantified results—that is methodical. It is the kind of infrastructure planning process that those opposite dream about. The contrast is embarrassing, because we have heard from the member for Reid—the chief cheerleader proposing this motion—a terrible proposition being put forward about the financing of WestConnex.

As a Western Sydney MP, I never want to take a backward step in representing people in my area. Yes, people in our area spend way too much time in traffic. Yes, they do want to see better funding for public transport infrastructure. But they should get properly funded, well-designed roads that they should not have to pay for twice. They are paying for this M4 upgrade twice with the retolling of the M4. In government, we set aside $1.8 billion in the 2013-14 budget for WestConnex on three simple conditions: first, that the proposal had to provide direct links to get people to the city and freight to the port; second, no new tolls on old roads; and third, finalisation of a detailed business case for assessment by Infrastructure Australia. And what did Mr Abbott do? He blasted out $1.5 billion at the end of an election promise megaphone, smack into the coffers of the New South Wales government, but then flicked the bill to Western Sydney motorists. The cheer squad here for retolling the M4 is made up of the member for Reid, the member for Banks, the member for Mitchell and the member for Lindsay—all of those members should tell their constituents that they support retolling the M4, and that they support paying for old roads out of their constituents' pockets. Every single one of you should be doing it. The average toll, member for Reid, on the initial Parramatta-to-Homebush M4 widening is about $3 in current dollars, but it will be higher when the stage opens in 2017, at the earliest.

There are serious shortcomings. Jacob Saulwick of the Sydney Morning Herald gave the example that those opposite have set up the WestConnex Delivery Authority. He asked: 'What are these people doing?' In his article of 2 November he pointed out:

None of them seem to be raising what is quite a large elephant in the room: that WestConnex is the biggest urban infrastructure project in the country—with $3.3 billion of taxpayers' money already committed to it—and hardly anything is known about it.

Taxpayers do not know how many cars are expected to use this motorway. They do not know its estimated impact on local roads. They are yet to be told its precise route. They're in the dark on construction methods.

When they did get around to advising people, they told people, on the day of the announcement, that their homes would be resumed. The article continued:

Even the need for the WestConnex is not known. It is certainly true Sydney's roads are inadequate. But this does not mean that the precise model of WestConnex is the solution.

When you look at it, this matter has a lot of questions that need to be answered. But the worst thing is that they are re-tolling the M4.

David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am thrilled to speak on this tremendous motion moved by my friend the member for Reid and seconded so eloquently by the member for Lindsay. This is a terrific motion for a terrific project. This is the first time I have spoken in this House on a contested motion. I am wondering if this is, effectively, what normally happens in the sense that the government puts forward a constructive motion, a project that is clearly in the interests of the people of my electorate and of Sydney more generally, and then the opposition comes along and says that it is a bad idea. I can tell you that for the people of the electorate of Banks this is a very good idea and a very, very important project.

The reality of Sydney roads is that Labor's legacy, in both the state government and in its failure to contribute at a federal level, is one of congestion—and everyone in Sydney knows that to be the case. It seems to me that, on the one hand, Labor proposes job-killing taxes and, on the other hand, we on this side propose job-creating infrastructure. I certainly know which side I would rather be on.

For my electorate WestConnex is particularly important because of the duplication of the M5 East tunnel. Anyone who has driven from Beverly Hills in my electorate—or from Hurstville, or from Mortdale or from any of the suburbs that access the M5 for the drive into the city—know how bad the M5 East tunnel can be. There are frequent delays and lots of congestion to the point where some people have abandoned using the road altogether. It is only two lanes at present, which is inadequate. One of the great outcomes of this project is that the M5 East tunnel will be increased to four lanes in each direction. That is going to provide much-needed relief for the people of Banks.

The trip from King Georges Road at Beverly Hills into the CBD is now estimated to take about 55 minutes in peak hour. A very substantial reduction of around 25 minutes on the journey is expected with the completion of this project. Imagine what that saving means in time. It means that people can get to their business meetings on time. It means that they can get more done during the working week. It also means that families can spend more time together. People who drive home from work in the city, and who are confronted by huge traffic delays on the M5 East, are going to get home to their families more quickly with the building of the WestConnex. That is obviously a good thing not just for the economy but also for family life in general. It is certainly a tremendous development for my area.

It is also important to think about some of the roads where congestion will be eased. There is a lot of congestion at the moment on roads like the River Road, Fairford Road, Belmore Road North and, of course, King Georges Road, which can be a real bottleneck in my electorate of Banks. At the moment, when you merge onto the M5 at Beverly Hills, you have to merge into the existing traffic. One of the important developments in the WestConnex project is that there will now be a dedicated lane for that merging at Beverly Hills so that traffic will not have to merge into the existing traffic. The member for Reid and others would understand how tremendous not having to face that merge will be for my electorate.

The contrast is very, very clear. Premier Nathan Rees was one of a number of premiers in New South Wales over a relatively short period of time. Back in 2009 he and his transport minister put in place plans for the M5 East duplication which were removed three months later. The M4 East was first promised by Bob Carr back in 2002, which I think is 11 years ago, and it did not happen. The government is committed, through its contribution to the WestConnex, to improving infrastructure in the city, and I commend the motion to the House.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I understand that this is the first time the member for Reid has brought a motion before the House. That is understandable, as he is a new member, and I congratulate him for his courage. But I think we are going to have to chalk this one down to a beginner's error, because it is a very, very rare member of parliament on either side of the House who will bring a motion before the House which does nothing but put the spotlight on a fundamental error—a big problem, a broken promise, a policy backflip—by their own leader. Let us have a think about what we have witnessed over the last couple of years.

It is little surprise that the member for Wentworth is not in here to speak on this motion, because he has entertained us, up hill and down dale, for the last three years on the importance of cost-benefit analysis when putting in place important infrastructure projects. Mr Deputy Speaker Mitchell, you sat in the last parliament and you would have witnessed some often very entertaining contributions from the member for Wentworth on the importance of cost-benefit analysis. We have set up a body whose single job is to ensure that large infrastructure projects in this country are subject to a cost-benefit analysis, and that body is known as Infrastructure Australia.

I would not have been surprised if the member for Sturt came in here and spoke on this motion, because he can speak on anything on any given day of the week, even if his contributions contradict what he said the day before. He has that capacity, but many others on the other side do not. Let me remind the member for Reid what his leader said prior to the federal election. When talking about large infrastructure projects, he said that in government they would require all Commonwealth infrastructure expenditure exceeding $100 million to be subject to analysis by Infrastructure Australia to test cost-effectiveness and financial viability, yet here we have the member for Reid celebrating the fact that they are bringing this project on without a cost-benefit analysis, without it coming within cooee of Infrastructure Australia and with serious flaws—as the member for Chifley and the member for Kingsford Smith have pointed out.

On this side of the House we are not opposed to building roads. We put record amounts of funding into roads and into urban transport infrastructure in New South Wales, right around Australia and in Sydney itself—$5.5 billion over the last four years, and that amount is 15 times greater than that spent by the previous, Howard government on Sydney transport infrastructure. We were willing to fund the WestConnex project, and $1.8 billion was put towards it in the 2013-14 budget; but it was subject to conditions. The first was that it would be toll-free—as the member for Chifley, the member for Kingsford Smith and the member for Parramatta have pointed out—and that there would be no new tolls on old roads, because that amounts to just a new tax on old infrastructure for motorists.

So the member for Reid is celebrating, and others have spoken in favour of his motion: a new tax on old roads for motorists. That is not the only problem with it. The second problem is that, because it has not been properly planned, we are shifting transport bottlenecks from one part of Sydney to another. As a result of this project—because all the planning has not been put in place and because it is not properly integrated with road, port and rail—we are going to see a shift of bottlenecks and Sydney is going to become a car park. That is what this project was going to amount to because it is not being properly planned.

There are two ways to do transport infrastructure: you can do it on the back of a beer coaster, as those opposite are celebrating, or you can put in place the proper planning process, which was established by the former government through Infrastructure Australia, and ensure that it is all done properly. Infrastructure Australia has looked at this. It did not punt it; it said that it is definitely a project that needs to be considered and that further planning is needed. It suggested that it was at the early stage of conception. If this were integrated with rail, those on this side of the House would find it a lot easier to support this motion.

Debate adjourned.