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

I rise today to continue my campaign on the Rouse Hill Hospital to ensure this vital public service is not just completed but constructed within a reasonable timeframe. The former coalition government allocated the land and got underway with the planning for a new public hospital just outside my community and the electorate of Mitchell, one of the fastest growing areas of Sydney. I want to note at the outset that the Minns Labor government is asking my community in Mitchell and the electorate of Greenway across the road to triple our development targets to take 30,000 new dwellings. At the same time, it is not progressing infrastructure like the Rouse Hill Hospital—one of the vital services absolutely needed if they're going to ask for a tripling of the density dwellings within our communities.

When you look at the population that has already come, this hospital has been flagged as absolutely necessary. There is pressure on the Blacktown Hospital and emergency room. The Blacktown Hospital was upgraded by a Liberal-National government at the state level, even though it has been a Labor electorate for maybe 100 years. The only government that upgraded the public hospital at Blacktown to a fully serviced public hospital was a Liberal-National government. I call on the member for Greenway, Michelle Rowland, who has fallen into the interesting position of taking part of my electorate now under a redistribution—we're now crossing over for a period of time in which she'll be the Labor candidate and I'll be the Liberal serving member—to get her socks on and get the Minns government to get the Rouse Hill public hospital underway.

She is also the president of the New South Wales Labor Party. We have a Labor premier, a Labor state president and a candidate now in the electorate who cannot convince her own government to get the Rouse Hill public hospital constructed, funded and underway. I think that, at the same time the state government is saying triple the density to 30,000 dwellings, we had 10,000 earmarked. This is an obvious, simple and logical argument, and the member for Greenway, state president of the Labor Party and the current sitting member who will be impacted by half of this overdevelopment in my electorate, is in a position of power. The new public hospital has had land allocated. Costs have been planned and put ahead by a Liberal-National government. It is time for the excuses from the New South Wales Labor Party to stop. It is time to get on with building this vital public infrastructure. You cannot ask a community to triple the density of their community but not provide the infrastructure upfront.

People in New South Wales have gotten used to a federal government which planned for the Western Sydney Airport, and the roads and rail links are going in before the airport opens. They've gotten used to great public infrastructure, like roads, rail and light rail. The light rail was a fantastic initiative, all funded and operated by a New South Wales Liberal-National government. It is time for the Labor government and Premier Minns—and I call on him and the member for Greenway—to do their jobs and complete the Rouse Hill public hospital as a matter of urgency prior to increasing the density they're allocating to our community.