Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This Saturday the people of New South Wales are going to the polls. When you enter that booth, you'll be presented with a choice between giving the reheated leftovers of the Liberals and Nationals a fourth consecutive term in office—potentially, that will be 16 straight years in power—or a fresh start for New South Wales with Chris Minns and Labor.

When I look at this election, I'm struck by the similarities between it and the federal election last year: a tired old incumbent coalition government plagued by scandals, addicted to pork-barrelling and treating public money like Liberal and National Party campaign funds; a government onto its third—or, in the case of New South Wales, its fourth—leader; a government that has run out of ideas for how to deal with today's challenges. Where Prime Minister Morrison's great idea was getting children to drive forklifts, Premier Perrottet wants to spend $850 million on Australia's most complicated term deposit scheme.

Just like Morrison, Perrottet is coming up against a Labor leader with serious ideas for fresh, meaningful reform and real solutions for the cost-of-living challenges facing the people of New South Wales. Those challenges are very serious. People across New South Wales, particularly in regional areas and in Western Sydney, are getting kicked in the teeth by the coalition's failed agenda. The coalition has allocated regional New South Wales a grand sum of zero dollars in the next two years for regional road upgrades—zero dollars! Under the Nationals there will be no money for regional roads for the next two years. Does anyone remember when the Nationals were the party for the regions? Labor, by the way, have committed to $724 million in regional road investments, and we won't be pork-barrelling regional funding like former Deputy Premier Barilaro did with the bushfire recovery grants.

But people in Sydney aren't doing much better under the Liberals, because they are living in the most tolled city on the planet. It costs some people in Western Sydney $60 a day to get to work in the CBD and back. That's $60 a day taken from your wallet and shoved straight into Transurban's pocket, and it's that's because of the Liberals' ideological obsession with privatisation. It's a kick in the teeth every time you are charged to use a road you already paid for through your taxes. Take Westconnex: it cost $21 billion to build, whilst the Premier, when he was Treasurer before the 2019 election, promised he would not privatise it. Not only did he break his promise; he flogged it off on the cheap to Transurban for just $20 billion. He flogged it off for less than it cost to build! Now Western Sydney residents will be paying for it through the nose for the rest of their lives. It is a forever tax on what should be a publicly owned and managed road. Unlikely the Perrottet government, which is making plans to privatise the new Western Harbour Tunnel, which will be another forever tax on residents of Western Sydney, Labor is committed to ending the so-called administration fees that Transurban slaps on top of your toll—a rip-off on top of a rip-off.

Labor is committed to ending the secrecy around the privatisation contracts. We still have no idea what the Perrottet government signed the people of New South Wales up for when they flogged off Westconnex and NorthConnex to Transurban. And Labor is committed to a $60-a-week toll cap—not the $60 per day that some people are currently paying but $60 per week capped. Labor is committed to a review overhaul of the toll network, led by former ACCC chairman Allan Fels.

On top of all that, Labor has committed to the end of the privatisation agenda in New South Wales. And I'm not just talking about roads: it has been revealed in recent days that the Perrottet government has spent $400,000 on consultants to advise on privatising Sydney Water. Privatising our roads, ports, electricity, public housing and the land titles office isn't enough for them; they want to privatise water as well. And that's in election season. The Premier is denying that he wants to privatise Sydney Water. If that's the case, why spend almost half a million dollars on advice on how to do it? We already saw Mr Perrottet, as Treasurer, break his promise not to privatise WestConnex before the last election, and I don't think that the people of New South Wales will be fooled for a second time. Modelling shows that privatising Sydney Water would increase water bills by 59 per cent, another kick in the teeth to Sydney residents.

If a Minns Labor government is elected on Saturday then the people of New South Wales will wake up on Sunday morning to a fresh start. They can wake up to a state government that will not be flogging off public assets to private consortiums on the cheap. They can wake up to a state government that will actually make things in Australia and New South Wales again. The Perrottet government, meanwhile, has wasted billions of dollars on cracked trams, trains that don't fit on the tracks and ferries that don't fit under bridges, or which will decapitate you if you actually ride on their top decks. All these things were made overseas.

We actually have a rich, rich history of domestic manufacturing in New South Wales. That's right across the state, particularly up in Newcastle. We've done it before: we have made trains. A Minns Labor government is committed to building the Tangara replacement fleet right here again—an important step for skilling Australia and rebooting manufacturing. Bringing domestic manufacturing back is a massive opportunity for Australian industry, Australian skills and Australian jobs. That's why we're launching the National Reconstruction Fund at the federal level, and it would be so valuable to have a partner reviving domestic manufacturing in our largest state.

We don't share the Liberal and National ideological opposition to building things in Australia, just as we don't share their ideological opposition to fair wage rises for essential workers. The Perrottet government has imposed an arbitrary 2.5 per cent pay cap on nurses, healthcare workers, allied health workers, teachers and other essential public workers since 2011. New South Wales allied health workers, teachers, nurses and other essential public workers are the only workers in Australia who are banned from negotiating pay increases with their employers. The Perrottet government was all too happy to praise nurses and allied health workers as heroes of the pandemic, but when it actually came to rewarding them with a fair pay increase they were nowhere to be seen. I bet that just about every person in New South Wales has a parent, sibling, partner, neighbour or friend who is impacted by this. When the Perrottet government has its boot on the neck of such a large proportion of working people New South Wales through its pay cap, it hurts the entire economy. We came to office federally last year with a commitment to get wages moving again, and a Minns Labor government has that exact same commitment. It has committed to scrapping the pay cap, not just because it's fair but because it makes economic sense.

Just as the Liberals and Nationals have robbed essential public workers of their fair pay, and just as they have robbed people in Western Sydney by flogging off their roads to Transurban, let's not forget that they've also robbed people across Sydney of their nightlife. The Liberals' lockout laws decimated small businesses, jobs and nightlife in Sydney. The only people who benefited from the lockout laws were the casino wowsers and the wealthy property developers gentrifying inner Sydney. If anyone is at all confused by the term 'wowser', the Australian writer CJ Dennis reportedly defined it as 'an ineffably pious person who mistakes this world for a penitentiary and himself for a warder.'

Even now that the lockouts have been scrapped, the city is still struggling to come to life after dark. Sadly, we have seen numerous iconic venues close down in recent years. That's why I was excited to see Chris Minns and NSW Labor pledge to invest $103 million in New South Wales's contemporary music scene. Sydney is an iconic global city. We deserve a lively nightlife, economy and live music at the heart of the city. It's time for a fresh start. We have fantastic members and candidates across the state, from Janelle Saffin in Northern Rivers, who has done such a wonderful job representing people in Lismore, right through to Simon Earle in Miranda.