Emma Husar (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to thank the 300 members in the communities of Western Sydney who have contributed submissions against the proposed incinerator at Eastern Creek. This is another fine example of the good people in my community of Lindsay and those around in Chifley, Greenway and McMahon. Sadly, Western Sydney knows too well the reality of fighting against the garbage we do not need and begging for the stuff we do, which is too often to the unwilling ears of Liberal governments, as was pointed out in the honourable member for Blaxland's speech before.

This is disappointing, given the platitudes we so often hear about our community of Western Sydney from those same Liberals who announce how important Western Sydney is to the rest of the country. Well, they have one thing right: Western Sydney is important and we deserve the same benefits in our communities, like jobs, infrastructure and amenity, that the rest of Sydney gets to enjoy.

We do not need the largest incinerator in the world located 800 metres away from homes and 1.8 kilometres from a school. We need jobs, education and a hospital to support our growing population. We need some meaningful dialogue about the long-term environmental future and the heat island effect that saw temperatures reach, unofficially, 50 degrees during summer. We do not need populations being pushed to the fringe of Sydney without meaningful investment.

This incinerator is another example of how little Liberals think of Western Sydney residents. We fought off toxic waste at Hunters Hill, a proposed industrial waste facility in the backyard of Orchard Hills and a maximum security jail built on the flood plains of the most flood-prone river in this country, and we are still fighting against an airport that will see a lot of talk about the benefits to our community but not a lot of action. (Time expired)