Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

If you ever want to understand why people deride politics and hate the spin and fabricated news that comes out of this place, look at this infrastructure document. It is exhibit A in the case against politicians. This infrastructure document is more a political puff piece than a genuine response to the types of things that people, particularly those in the region that I represent in Western Sydney, want to see when it comes to infrastructure. There is no better proof than the way the reported Western Sydney City Deal was announced recently by the Prime Minister. This was the big game changer. If something is being talked up beyond what it is, there will be the phrase 'game changer' and you can pretty much spot the fake.

The Western Sydney City Deal that the Prime Minister and Premier Mike Baird revealed is supposed to lead to the generation of 100,000 jobs for Sydney's west. Here are some of the things it is supposed to achieve. It is intended to provide a model for future arrangements to deliver more jobs, transport and services. Guess what? It is centred around one thing and one thing only—Badgerys Creek airport. It talks about a whole lot of things that they will do to improve infrastructure in Sydney's west.

Guess where it was announced? This great plan, this great deal, for Western Sydney was announced in Redfern. The member for Werriwa remarked to me that the only thing Redfern is west of is the CBD. It is about 40 kilometres from one of the suburbs I represent—Mount Druitt. So the geniuses in the Turnbull government from the Prime Minister down, including his army of advisers and army of infrastructure ministers—I do not know how many infrastructure ministers actually exist in this Turnbull government but there is a plethora of them—thought that there would not be a problem in announcing a Western Sydney City Deal outside of Western Sydney. How do you do that?

Deputy Speaker Wicks, I know your electorate is on the Central Coast. I know that as representatives we will have our differences, but you would be stunned if a Central Coast deal were announced in Sydney instead of in Gosford. From my perspective, announcing a Western Sydney deal outside of the region that it is supposed to benefit just shows that it is all about spin, not about substance.

Here is exhibit B in that case: not one of the Western Sydney councils has been engaged in genuine consultation about this Western Sydney plan—not one. The councils have very politely said, 'We'd like to talk,' when really they should have been screaming blue murder that those opposite would announce an infrastructure deal that will impact on them yet have no consultation or discussion with them whatsoever.

Again, this represents in the purest terms the problem with Sydney. As I have said previously, Sydney is a city of two halves where the east determines what the west will or will not get and has no consultation with the west. And we are supposed to cop it. We have no funding for better schools and no funding for hospitals. Mount Druitt Hospital, for example, lost a cardiac ward under the Baird government, which called it 'relocation'. People in our area know exactly what it was. To close a cardiac ward in Mount Druitt Hospital, which is in an area where heart disease impacts so many people, is scandalous. It got shut, and not a whimper.

We do not get the schools, we do not get the hospitals and we certainly do not get the roads investment. This government spruik that they are going to invest in the M12, for example. That is a good thing, but the big game changer—to use their term—is the M9. That is the road that will go west of the M7, but we have no details on how much money, when it is going to happen, when it is going to be spent, when it is going to go ahead—nothing.

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