Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My two state Labor colleagues Jodi McKay and Julia Finn presented a petition to the New South Wales parliament with over 10,000 signatures. People signed up in large numbers in opposition to the reintroduction of the toll on the M4. We used to have a toll on the M4 when it was first built. It was abolished by the Labor government in 2010 because the freeway had already been paid for. Now, with the excuse of widening the freeway by one extra lane, the Berejiklian government is putting it back on—a $4.56 toll each way from Church Street to Homebush Bay Drive. It is not just until the expansion is covered but for the next 43 years and rising every quarter. And that is just the beginning, because a few years later, when the next section of WestConnex is completed—the M4 East, which is a tunnel from Homebush Bay Drive linking to the City West Link—it will be an additional $3.95 each way.

We are talking about a person leaving Parramatta and paying $8.51 per trip into the city. That is $17.02 a day, $85.10 a week and $4,425 a year to travel to the city. You can of course get off the M4. You can go on Parramatta Road. Since the tolls were removed, Parramatta Road has been quite light in traffic. But those of us who live in that region know that the M4 is actually a local road. It is the road you use to get from Church Street to Silverwater and from Parramatta to Auburn, for example. But with these new tolls, even in the first phase of them, if you drive your kids to sport at Homebush, if you drive your kids to a soccer match at Homebush, it will cost you $9.12 for the two trips—$9.12 each way. If you get off the M4 and you go on Parramatta Road, we all know that the local trucks that drive around—the couriers, the local deliveries for that really large industrial area that sits alongside the M4—are all going to be on Parramatta Road. They are not going to be paying the tolls to go on the freeway. We will not see local businesses paying the tolls—and, if they do, we are all going to pay for it every time they enter the freeway.

What we are going to see again, as we saw when we had a toll last time, is incredible traffic flow on the small roads that go through our suburbs. It is going to be a case of spending the extra half an hour or 40 minutes to get your child to and from a sporting event or paying $9.12. These are local roads. The Berejiklian government deserves what is coming over this. Nobody pays $4,425 a year to drive to work. (Time expired)