Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The great heartland of Sydney is Western Sydney. Acres of newsprint have recently been devoted to Western Sydney, there have been hours of television and radio commentary about Western Sydney and today there are editorials in both the Australian and the Financial Reviewabout WesternSydney. I really do not know how much the editors of the Australian or the Financial Review would know about Western Sydney. But, with all this interest in Western Sydney, the most bizarre thing I have seen was Senator Birmingham on the doors today. There he was, a senator for South Australia, on the doors with scripted and rehearsed spin about Western Sydney—a South Australian senator pontificating about Western Sydney. He was sent out to tell the people of Western Sydney that they were concerned about protection visas and the carbon price.

Apart from the 12 years I lived in Muswellbrook in the Upper Hunter region of New South Wales, I have spent most of my life in Australia in Western Sydney. I have lived in St Marys, I have lived in St Clair, I have lived in Parramatta and I now live in the Lower Blue Mountains. I have two daughters. They grew up and were educated in St Clair. Both have degrees and both are professionals. I am proud of them, I am proud of the public schools they were taught in and I am proud of the teachers of Western Sydney who gave them their opportunity.

I spend a lot of my time in Western Sydney and when people there talk about the issues—the things which will improve their lives—not many people raise the carbon price or temporary protection visas. When I have discussions in Western Sydney, it is all about infrastructure. It is about the Richmond bridge, where commuters queue for hours in the morning. It is about bringing more culture into the area through the government's $9.5 million grant to get the Springwood Civic Centre up and running. It is about sport—building a stand for the Windsor Wolves down in the Hawkesbury so young people and their families can watch sport in decent comfort in winter. All of this has been promoted and pushed by the Labor candidate for Macquarie, Susan Templeman.

On education, the people of Western Sydney want to talk about Gonski and improved public schools. They want to talk about health, they want to talk about the trade training centres which are being built across Western Sydney and they want to talk about jobs. They want jobs for themselves and jobs for their kids and they want decent rights in those jobs. They want to be treated with respect when they go to work and they want to have access to an industrial umpire—something which was not there under the last coalition government.

No government in history has, over two terms, invested more in Western Sydney than the Rudd and Gillard governments. Western Sydney, depending on which statistics you look at, has about 1½ million or 2 million people. The biggest employer in Western Sydney is manufacturing and the government has made recent announcements about how it will promote manufacturing. I will come to that later. Manufacturing is the biggest employer in Western Sydney, with 12.1 per cent of the workforce. It is followed by retail, health care and social services, which each employ 10.7 per cent of the workforce.

Look at what the government did when the global financial crisis hit this country, when investment was frozen by the private sector. The investment that the government made allowed the healthcare, retail and social services sectors to continue, and we avoided a recession in this country. We invested in construction, in transport and warehousing, in education and training and in public administration. That is what kept this country out of recession.

What do we have from the coalition? What do they want to do? They want to send these public administration jobs in Western Sydney to some remote part of the Northern Territory. This is the nonsense that we have from the coalition. They do not care about the issues in Western Sydney. One of the fundamental issues for people in Western Sydney is travel to work. Nearly 200,000 Western Sydney workers travel outside Western Sydney every day to get to work. There are areas of social disadvantage in Western Sydney that the Labor government is addressing. These are the issues for Western Sydney. It is not about sending a South Australian senator with his Richard Burton tones—his serious voice on—out in full view of the public to tell the people of Western Sydney what they need and what they are concerned about. It does not matter doing that; you have to get on with the job. I have to say that, after years of coalition government, they squandered the opportunity to build Western Sydney. As Peter Hartcher noted in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald in April 2009:

But when the mining boom arrived, framing the budget went from being a carefully managed process to the equivalent of a cargo cult.

That is how the current opposition dealt with the budget; it was a cargo cult. Prime Mister Howard's former chief of staff, Arthur Sinodinos, now Senator Sinodinos from New South Wales:

was also a former Treasury official. He said the boom gave the budget process "a lucky dip feel"—

A lucky dip! They were dealing with the budget on the basis of a lucky dip—

… as officials and ministers scrambled to formalise tax cut options and decide which ones would get the go-ahead.

That is how the coalition dealt with the budget of this country, and that is from a current coalition senator, Senator Arthur Sinodinos.

The first phase of the mining boom in particular and economic conditions in general saw the Howard government just about drowning in revenue. With so much money sloshing around, fiscal discipline and nation-building priorities collapsed. The priority was not Western Sydney; it was not about nation-building projects in Western Sydney; it was not about making life easier for people in Western Sydney. It was about giveaways; it was about a lucky dip approach to the budget. Who will ever forget the wave of panic, the panic spending by the coalition in the wake of the Liberals loss in the Ryan by-election in March 2001. That was to be dwarfed only by the infamous Crazy John's closing down sale in the mid-2004 election campaign when $6 billion was added to government spending in half an hour. Showering tax concessions and rebates on a startled middle class unaccustomed to such largesse became a social engineering art form carried out in the complete absence of social or financial need. Meanwhile, the nation's infrastructure needs were ignored, Western Sydney was ignored, while our research institutions, hospitals and schools were subjected to death by a thousand cuts. That is the reality of the coalition. And when they get out and say that they want to do things for Western Sydney you have to look at their record in Western Sydney.

What the Commonwealth government has done is committed 10 times what the Howard government spent on infrastructure in this country during its 12 years in office—10 times the amount. All the Howard government spent in Western Sydney was $350 million for this M7 toll road. Since late 2007 the Labor government has spent $3.2 billion, including $800 million for the development of the Moorebank intermodal, $980 million for the construction of the Southern Sydney Freight Line, $93 million to widen the F5 at Campbelltown and $300 million to upgrade the Great Western Highway, which has been a goat's track under the coalition government for 12 years. We have spent the money to make it easier for people to get to and from work, and there is much more to be done. We have spent $8½ million to begin planning for the installation of an electronic freeway management system along the full length of the M4. We have put up $25 million to advance the WestConnex project. A further $150 million has been set aside to improve the M2 to F3 link. We have $2.1 billion on the table for the Parramatta to Epping rail link, which would cement Parramatta's position as Sydney's second CBD. These are the practical things that we have done in terms of infrastructure in the Sydney region and Western Sydney.

Despite the coalition raking in over $40 billion worth of infrastructure promises at the last election, not one dollar of infrastructure spending was promised for Sydney, never mind Western Sydney. And they get out there and tell people what is good for Sydney! There was not one dollar in infrastructure promised at the last election. And what was the solution? Let me quote the Leader of the Opposition from the ABC's Four Corners program on 16 August 2010. He said:

Now … if you want better public transport in Sydney … sure ask the Feds for more money … but basically you've got to change the State government if you want better public transport in Sydney.

What they are saying there is that it is not a federal government issue to improve public transport in Sydney or to improve infrastructure in Western Sydney; it is a matter for the state government. Well, we have never taken that view. We believe the federal government has a big role to play in Western Sydney—a role that has been completely ignored under nearly 12 years of the Howard government.

It is not just transport infrastructure; it is health. There is funding for the Nepean Hospital, with $96 million for the new east block and $17 million for a new clinical school; $31.7 million to Blacktown Hospital for 10 rehabilitation beds and a specialised 20-bed neuropsychiatry subacute unit; $11.5 million to Blacktown Hospital for additional emergency services; $15 million for a GP superclinic in Liverpool; $1.75 million in south-western Sydney for New Directions: Mothers and Babies Services and Strong Fathers Strong Families—and it goes on in health. In education there is the Hawkesbury Trade Training Centre; the Blacktown Girls High School Hospitality Trade Training; $2.16 million for two trade training centres to benefit two schools in Hughes, Bonnyrigg High School and Miller Technology High School; and up to $17 million for trade training centres in the Penrith area.

These are the issues that build the western suburbs. These are the issues that build the infrastructure, the health and the education capacity of Western Sydney. That is what a Labor government is about. Compare that with the lack of attention to Western Sydney by the Howard government. Compare that with the profligacy of the Howard government, who did not care about Western Sydney, who squandered the opportunity of the mining boom and who left us with real challenges in Western Sydney.

So the Labor government has the track record in Western Sydney. We are the ones who understand that it is about education; it is about health; it is about transport; it is about infrastructure. For the coalition—through a South Australian senator—to lecture the Labor government on Western Sydney is an absolute joke.