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

It was almost this time last year when I stood in this House to speak about the lack of community consultation in Parramatta, and it's a shame, but no surprise, that this has continued. The speed with which the former Baird and now the Berejiklian government have acted, once they abolished our councils, to rip out community infrastructure and sell off public land, is astonishing. Most of their decisions, arguably, would have never made it through an elected council, and they cannot be undone by a newly elected council, come September.

They said, for example, that we couldn't have a new stadium without demolishing our memorial pool, a pool paid for and loved by Parramatta residents. The Parramatta pool is gone. Finally, the state government offered to partly pay for a new one outside of the CBD, still many hot summers away, but—surprise, surprise—it is largely the Parramatta ratepayers who paid for the first pool and didn't want it demolished who will now have to pay for the new one.

The government has graciously agreed to fund the restoration of historic sites in North Parramatta, including the Parramatta Female Factory. It's disgraceful that those sites, given their historic significance, are in the state that they are in now, under state care. But, in return, the residents must accept that 2,700 units will be built around and on top of what is a site of both Indigenous and colonial significance. Hundreds of established trees will be uprooted, and public land sold off to the highest bidder. Worst of all perhaps is that this development undermines any move towards World Heritage listing of the female factory precinct. Over 1,000 submissions were made against the proposal.

The residents asked for the council's decision on the development control plan to wait until after the council elections in September, at that time just six to eight weeks away. But, rather than wait, the council administrator pushed ahead with a mammoth list of points in what was to be the last ordinary meeting of council before caretaker mode. It was 5½ hours long, with the business papers over 1,300 pages. The administrator said newly elected council members would be duty bound to abide by her decisions. The meeting included major infrastructure projects such as the Parramatta light rail, which will cut through a heritage precinct and requires the demolishing of the popular 188-year-old Royal Oak Hotel. Committee members had to submit speeches to the council verbatim before the meeting was held. Journalist Elizabeth Farrelly, who attended the meeting, wrote this:

… if you'd designed a faux-democratic process deliberately to exclude people from deliberating on their own land, in their own city, this would be it.

For the last two months of administration, regular council meetings had agenda papers 3,000 to 4,000 pages long.

This is what we have had to put up with in Parramatta—decisions made by one person, and community considerations ignored while the state government pushed through their agenda. And this is after decades of neglect. We have a new administrator and, suddenly, we find our community infrastructure and our public land sold off from underneath our feet.

Of course, the M4 toll is back. Ten years ago, the M4 toll was removed because the road had been paid for. Now it's back in place for an extra lane between Church Street and Parramatta, charging an extra toll of $4.56 each way just for that section, which means an extra $2,188 per year for every motorist who travels to the city for work five days a week. So you can understand that traffic is now moving off. Our side roads are now chockers, with cars parked on Parramatta Road. Once again, the problem that we had before is back. But, unlike other toll roads in Sydney—because Western Sydney is 'special' to this state government—the increase is not in line with inflation. The M4 WestConnex tolls will increase by four per cent every year up until 2040, nearly twice the level of CPI. The residents of Parramatta and the rest of Western Sydney should not be paying for a road which was already paid for. In large numbers, they are refusing to. We also shouldn't be paying for a road that's going to be built close to the city. Western Sydney gets the toll; the inner city gets a new road—one, I should say, that they don't want either. We also of course have the on-again, off-again relocation of the Powerhouse Museum.

I'm running out of time, so I just want to say this to the people of Parramatta: on 9 September, the community of Parramatta has the chance to bring consultation back in a big way with the elections of a new City of Parramatta council. You will have your long-delayed say on the future of Parramatta after 18 months of administration. It's a serious matter. This is our democracy. Choose carefully. Consider who the candidates are. Make sure you know who you are voting for.

I'd like to acknowledge the people of Parramatta who have led the discussions on our city's future, despite the deaf ears of our leaders: the North Parramatta Residents Action Group, who have led the charge against the closure of the pool and rallied to preserve the Fleet Street precinct, especially Suzette Meade; local Darug elders Jacinta Tobin and Kerry Kenton, and others, who are trying to protect the artefacts; Parramatta Female Factory Friends, who continue to push— (Time expired)