Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

You are not providing transport infrastructure for your own electorate nor my electorate of Macarthur. I'm sorry that the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport is not here today to hear me talk about what a disaster public transport is in my electorate of Macarthur. We have the Western Sydney Airport being developed on the northern tip of my electorate and into the electorate of Werriwa. They are not providing appropriate public transport infrastructure for the new Western Sydney Airport. The lack of public transport will mean that my constituents will not be able to fully utilise the benefits of the Western Sydney Airport. We also have Appin Road. A few weeks ago, we had the infrastructure minister and the member for Hume out in their Bob the Builder hard hats doing a public relations exercise, pretending that they're developing Appin Road. They're not. They've pulled up a few tree stumps and they call that delivering infrastructure. It is not.

I could go through the cuts in infrastructure in our state over the next few years, but I want to concentrate on my electorate of Macarthur. Just as a guide, there's a reduction of spending on infrastructure in New South Wales from $2.7 billion in 2017-18 to a mere $800 million in 2021-22. There are cuts. I find it ludicrous that anyone could believe that this is a government that's delivering on infrastructure for Macarthur. I was at a sausage sizzle in one of the newer suburbs in my electorate, Oran Park, on the weekend. There were huge complaints from local residents about the lack of transport infrastructure. The Northern Road, which goes from my electorate through to the northern electorate of Lindsay, around Penrith, should have been developed as a six- or eight-lane road, but it is only a four-lane road, which means that in peak hours it's already congested. People are being forced onto roads which are already inadequate.

Investment in transport infrastructure in New South Wales has fallen in the projected budgets 2018-19 and onwards by at least 25 per cent. That's money that could have been spent on much needed upgrades to roads and bridges and the beginning of our railway development. The Leppington train line, which was already planned to connect with the Western Sydney Airport, gets no funding from this federal government. It is ridiculous. Every transport expert in the state that I have spoken to suggests that it's a must when the airport opens. This government is a disgrace in the way that it's politicised infrastructure development in New South Wales— (Time expired)

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