Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight work starts at the Pyrmont Bridge Road site for WestConnex stage 3. The project starts tonight but the community consultation processes are next week! What we have is a state government that consults the community after the work starts, and it wonders why there's so much alienation from the state government when it comes to its infrastructure proposals, whether it be WestConnex or the light rail project. What has characterised this is a lack of proper planning, a lack of proper community consultation, and a lack of appropriate outcomes.

We know that there have been examples of houses which are seeing their walls cracked, which are seeing damage, but there's no process, as had been called for by the shadow transport minister in New South Wales, Jodi McKay, to ensure that the community can get an independent assessment of whether the damage has been caused by tunnelling activity or not. Surely the state government should put in place a proper process there, just like they should also put in place proper filtering of the stacks for this project. You have the state Liberal government saying there should be filtering on the North Shore in schools, but not saying that for schools in my electorate. These processes need to be looked after in an appropriate way. I call on the New South Wales government to filter the exhaust stacks and to ensure there is a proper process for residents to be able to go to if there is any damage to homes as the result of this infrastructure work.