Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

People west of the Hawkesbury River have waited a really long time to see progress on a new flood-resilient bridge. Fifteen years after the Prime Minister and I stood on the now 121-year-old Richmond Bridge, people are finally seeing what the New South Wales government plan is. Now a four-lane bridge providing a higher crossing and approaches, this latest design means the government have listened to community feedback on previous concepts that originally ignored any flood resilience. Its aim is to ease congestion and make the trip across the river a bit easier for thousands of people every single day. Has Transport for NSW got a perfect plan? I don't think anyone would expect it to be perfect. While I have my own views, when I attended the online session last Wednesday, and Saturday's in-person information session, I greatly appreciated the opportunity to hear people's feedback. From querying how effective the traffic flow will be to impacts on flooding and impacts on historic properties, there are a lot of issues that Transport for NSW will need to address.

What is different, I note, to the last experience this region had of a new bridge at Windsor, is that there is engagement by Transport for NSW. I'm sure all of us who fought for years to preserve the unique and now diminished Thompson Square—where there was absolutely no engagement about the serious issues of that flawed Windsor Bridge project—appreciate the difference. It's very clear to me that the people in Southee Road in Hobartville have not had their concerns fully addressed, and they deserve to have their quality of life protected. I'll be supporting them in that objective. I joined them in requesting an additional information session on the Richmond side of the river, which is in process of being arranged, and upgrading the North Richmond intersection of Terrace Road, Bells Line of Road and Grose Vale Road is also an essential part of this plan.

I'm obviously very mindful that the larger bridge and new design do not come within the budget allocated by the previous federal and state Liberal governments. The shortfall for this project is the consequence of poor planning by the Liberals and their back-of-the-envelope costings. Scott Morrison announced $200 million for the bridge leading into the 2019 election, vastly underestimating the cost. He was forced to double the federal contribution in 2021, and now we know that still leaves a shortfall. This is the mess left by the Liberals that we are cleaning up. Projects of this scale are funded over a number of years, and I'll be working with my government and the New South Wales government to ensure there is no delay in completing the entire project. I started this process to build a bridge, and I won't stop until this project is fully delivered.

In 2012 something called Gonski was born. Two years earlier, businessman David Gonski was engaged by the Labor government to lead a review into Australia's school funding with the aim of reducing the impact of social disadvantage on educational outcomes and ending inequities in the distribution of public money. The report was released in February 2012. The reforms recommended that governments reduce payments to overfunded schools that didn't need them and redirect those funds on a needs based model. Its key recommendation was the schooling resource standard—the SRS—a base rate of funding per student with extra loading for disadvantage factors. The SRS would determine the funding required for each school. The change was designed—and still is—to ensure that every Australian child, no matter what their background, can get a high-quality education. David Gonski said the system would ensure that differences in educational outcomes are not the result of differences in wealth, income, power or possessions.

I say this because parents with kids at school now could well have been in school themselves as the Gonski momentum grew. I was handing out Gonski information back in 2013 at Winter Magic and Springwood's fair. I held the first forum with the New South Wales Teachers Federation at about the same time at Windsor South Public School to help explain what Gonski meant, and I had to watch the Abbott government break its promise of no cuts to education as it ditched its commitment to Gonski funding on coming to government. Now, we don't call it Gonski, but the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement is the same principle, and it's about time that New South Wales and the Commonwealth got the deal done.