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

I wanted to dedicate my grievance tonight to a project in Western Sydney that has been known for years as Badgerys Creek Airport. It is now rebadged as Western Sydney Airport, because the proponents of this airport know how loathed Badgerys Creek was through the late-nineties. It was so loathed that it forced the then Howard government to shelve the plans for that airport because people in Western Sydney realised they were getting a dud deal—that all the problems associated with Sydney Airport were basically being shoved out west, and they were not going to put up with it.

I am often asked why I rail against this airport so much. I rail against it because it is the classic representation of a problem that bedevils Western Sydney. With any of the big decisions that are made about Sydney—a city of two halves: the east and the west—all the big infrastructure decisions are made by decision-makers who do not live in our region. They make decisions completely absent of thorough and genuine consultation with people in our area. Tony Abbott, in January 2013, said he had no plans for a second airport in Western Sydney. He then gets elected and announces it. As I said, this is a classic case of someone on the other side of the city making a plan for the west of the city and—as is always the case with infrastructure in our area—we never get the things in Western Sydney we need; we are given the things we do not want.

We have many needs, such as better roads that do not have to have tolls attached to them. In our part of Western Sydney people in my electorate are paying $35 a day just to travel on toll roads. It would be great to get a toll-free road in Western Sydney. It would be great to get hospitals that are recognised for being the best in the state, rather than being the most stressed in the state—as is the case for the member for Lindsay, who, with Nepean Hospital, has the unenviable title of being an MP with one of the most stressed hospitals in New South Wales. The Liberal government just happened to announce $500 million for the hospital the other day, after their last budget gave a miserly $1 million to the most stressed hospital in the state. We have schools falling apart with the backlog of maintenance needed. Parents are sending their kids to schools where they can see the facilities crumbling around them—frayed carpets, toilets not working and asbestos not removed in playgrounds. There are all these problems.

And what is our answer to it? This airport. This airport is backed by a whole cabal of rent seekers—people who do not live in Western Sydney. These are business people on the other side of town who are seeking to profit. The one I think of, the group that is profiting most out of this, is a group that is ironically—and I use the term deliberately—called the Western Sydney Leadership Dialogue, whose chairman operates out of Balmain and does not and will not live in Western Sydney.

The Western Sydney Leadership Dialogue had a great day today. They had a great day! They made $250,000 off a conference today talking about Western Sydney Airport—and it was held in Sydney, in the CBD. They charged people $500 a head and they talked about an airport over 40 kilometres away and they made all this money. There is a reason why they made the money—today, they had the transport minister, Andrew Constance, at their conference. He was talking about all these infrastructure projects and one of the biggest ones was the airport. The chair, Christopher Brown, said, 'Minister Constance led the public discussion on value sharing and was an example of his willingness to engage with industry.' I have never heard the Western Sydney Leadership Dialogue talk about problems in our area.

I have mentioned the Nepean Hospital before. I have not once heard the Western Sydney Leadership Dialogue call for an investment in some of the most stressed hospitals in the state, but after the funding announcement that I referred to earlier was made they did manage to put out a media release—surprise, surprise!—welcoming the funding decision. They are never there supporting the people of Western Sydney; they are never there criticising the Baird government. They are his great cheerleaders. They are out with the pom, poms, cheering on the Baird government over this announcement, but they are never there doing the hard yards. Why? Because the Western Sydney Leadership Dialogue would not be able to get a Baird government minister to attend any of the forums which they could make money from, if they criticised the Baird government. The Western Sydney Leadership Dialogue is all about making money and not about representing Western Sydney. It is an absolute disgrace.

I think there are serious ethical issues involved when a person who has been engaged by government to sit on a panel then makes money from that involvement. In Chris Brown's case, he puts in his own bio that he was involved in the federal commission, which is a federally appointed position, for Sydney's second airport and also the expert panel. So he has been involved in a government panel and now he makes money from that involvement. I think that is wrong. I think it is wrong that a person in that position acts in a federal government appointed role and then goes out, as the Western Sydney Leadership Dialogue did today, and makes close to a quarter of a million dollars in fees from this one thing. They are promoting a project, the terms of which they would never tolerate in their part of town. They would never tolerate a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week airport operating over there.

I said before that Sydney is a city of two halves: the east and the west. The east has an airport that is protected by a curfew and hourly flight caps and the west is being told: the only way you get jobs, the only way you get infrastructure, the only way you get anything you want is if you support this airport and you support it on the basis that there is no curfew and there are no hourly flight caps. This is extortion, and it should not be put up with by the people of Western Sydney. They should not cop that. People in Western Sydney, as I have said before, deserve economic opportunity and quality of life. They do not have to sacrifice one for the other. If you want to see government investment in infrastructure then where are we at with things like the M9? What about finding a way to get a road that will connect up the north-west growth centre with the M7? There are 150,000 people living there. This would also open up the employment lands between the M7 and M9 and transform job opportunities in Western Sydney. Why aren't we doing that? We are not. They make an announcement about the M12. That is great, but it is a smaller road relative to what is needed. We do not get it. And this is my point: those businesses, the cabal of rent seekers that back this airport, only support the airport because they are making money from it. They are not championing the things that we need. They are not talking about the run-down schools. They are not talking about the run-down hospitals. They are not talking about the need for extra roads. They are basically talking about being a cheer squad for a Baird Liberal government or for a federal Liberal government by putting a project together that runs counter to what we need.

It is worth bearing in mind that the bulk of the jobs at this airport do not come until the second half of this century. If we want to increase economic activity in Sydney, why aren't we lifting the government imposed restrictions on Sydney Airport to allow more flights, more tourists and more spending power in Sydney? But they will not do that. They basically want to have this airport as the way to do that. They do not have any of the major carriers out there. They do not have any way around the transport of fuel. We still have no idea of how that is going to be done. It will all be done by surface transport, not rail. They have answered none of those questions. Again, I make the point that this is not delivering the infrastructure that Western Sydney really needs; this is about what east of the city wants to see. This is not right, and this is why it is my biggest concern.

The other thing—and I will end on this point—is that I am, as has been well reported, a good friend of the member for Kooyong, the Minister for the Environment and Energy, Josh Frydenberg. I would hate for Josh Frydenberg to be recognised as the first minister to oversee the loss of a World Heritage listed area in the Blue Mountains. That World Heritage listing by UNESCO occurred when John Howard decided to shelve the second airport. We are now seeing a new airport being created right next to a World Heritage listed area. I do genuinely worry that we will lose the World Heritage listing with this second airport. Again, we need infrastructure that works for Western Sydney, not for Eastern Sydney.