Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

If it wasn't bad enough that the people of Western Sydney are fighting a waste-to-energy incinerator, we have even worse news. The original proposal that we've already defeated is back. So now the residents of Western Sydney are fighting off not one but two incinerator proposals at Eastern Creek.

I don't know what it is about Western Sydney that makes so many people think they can use Western Sydney as a dumping ground, whether it was the proposal a few years ago to dump radioactive waste at Kemps Creek in my electorate or now these two disgusting proposals for incinerators at Eastern Creek. They claim they are clean energy. They are not clean energy. It is burning garbage. It is literally a dumpster fire, and I'm not the only who thinks it. The original proposal was rejected by the New South Wales planning commission because of the air-quality impacts and the risk to human health. The proposal was then appealed to the New South Wales Land and Environment Court, and the proposers lost. Yet they're back again.

This is something that the people of Western Sydney should not have to put up with. The people of St Clair, Erskine Park, Minchinbury, Horsley Park and Cecil Park already deal with bad odours and foul stenches on a very regular basis, and some people seem to think the answer to that is to build two big incinerators in our community. It won't happen, because we will fight. We're used to fighting in Western Sydney, and we will fight these two disgusting proposals to the end. These incinerators should not happen.

See this speech in context