Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is good to be able to hear a contribution without the usual blah, blah, blah that we get. You're someone who has obviously dedicated some time to the thinking and the application of that, and I commend you on your speech. That is what we should be using them for. It is important that we think beyond the talking points on these things.

I know that these budgets are marketing exercises, but this budget was marketing on steroids. It was fully pumped up. When I look at the budget and the contributions that members of parliament give during the budget session, particularly on the appropriations, which is what we are talking about now, you can either talk about the budget at the national level or at the specific local level. There are a whole range of ways that you can slice and dice these things. From my perspective, I will be talking about a national issue that has a critical impact on my area—and I suspect on my colleagues' electorates too—and that is infrastructure.

I come from a part of Western Sydney, north-west Sydney, which the member for Bennelong would be broadly familiar with. We have 200,000 people moving into our part of the world. If you're going to move so many people in, you've got to make sure that the infrastructure is there to move them around. I've got a lot of regard for the member for Bennelong's commitment to a massive, truly nation-building project, which is high-speed rail. I think it will have a big impact in the longer term if we get it right.

We talk about decentralisation. Today is six years to the day that Labor icon Gough Whitlam passed away, back in 2014. He was big on decentralisation and did a lot to encourage it. We owe it to people that have gone before us, who thought about this, to progress it.

One of the things that I'm proud to stand with a coalition member, the member for Bennelong, on is high-speed rail. I think it would genuinely change the way the nation goes—twinned with high-speed broadband. It would mean that people could work remotely and, if they needed to travel, they could live remotely and move quickly. If we were able to get this connected between Brisbane and Melbourne, it would transform the place. That would be infrastructure investment that would make a difference. It would create a lot of jobs, change the way we live and change the dynamic of the way the nation operates. In time, if you had the vision, you could see it connect up other parts of the country as well. It would be a leading thing to do. It would be good to do.

In my part of the world, governments love to announce new homes being built, but they never like to pay for them. By that I mean putting the infrastructure in place so that people aren't crammed in like sardines on the main roads or on public transport. In my part of the world, I'm looking at 200,000 people moving in. We've already got roads that are choked after they were built up just a few years ago. Richmond Road out near Marsden Park has dual lanes either side. That was increased from a single lane either side a few years ago. It's already choked. People can't move.

Recently on TV, on Channel Nine, a resident talked about how his neighbour had moved into the new estate in Elara, Marsden Park and then moved back to Wentworthville. He had his dream home, but he moved his family out because it took him 25 minutes to get from where he lived in the estate to the main road, because the main road was already choked and that created a backlog all the way through. This is what people are putting up with.

I've spoken about that. I've also spoken about other bottlenecks in our area that I was really hoping we'd get some money in this budget to fix. I wrote to the Deputy Prime Minister about Francis Road and Railway Street and the Davis overpass upgrade in the Rooty Hill and Mount Druitt area. This road connects to the Mount Druitt Hospital. Every day you see traffic lined up. It's another road in my area that's choked. I wrote to the Deputy Prime Minister. He took his sweet time to respond. He sent me a typical response—blah, blah, blah. The letter said: 'The Australian government remains committed to delivering a $100 billion 10-year infrastructure pipeline'—blah, blah, blah—'laying the foundations for a financial bridge'—blah—'to meet the challenges of a fast-growing population'—blah, blah, blah—'to support jobs and the economy to stem the economic impact of COVID-19.' All the little catchphrases and fancy phrases are in there. There's $100 billion over 10 years.

Last year there was an underspend of the infrastructure budget under this Deputy Prime Minister and infrastructure minister. There was $1.7 billion they didn't spend in the last financial year. How could that escape any normal person? They would all say that, with all the stuff that's going on in this country, how can you underspend by $1.7 billion? If you go back over the course of this government, you'll see that they're underspending $1 billion a year. They talk about $100 billion over 10 years as a financial bridge, but there are all these holes in the bridge that we just passed and that was just laid out. They are underspending all the time.

There are all these people who are frustrated. They don't see the infrastructure working. I don't see the Metro North West, which stops at Tallawong, getting connected to St Mary's. One of the busiest transport connections from Penrith to the city—the T1 line—even according to the New South Wales government's own statistics, is late three out of five days. It's crowded and it's late. We haven't had a plan to decongest that rail line since Kristina Keneally was the Premier. There has been no plan. Minister Andrew Constance can't fit a ferry under a bridge or put new trains on tracks—they don't fit properly and have to be refitted. The can't-do minister, Andrew Constance, teamed up with the no-clue infrastructure minister, Michael McCormack. We are depending on them to generate jobs through infrastructure at a time when COVID is having an impact, and they can't do that right.

The infrastructure minister was asked recently about people in the north-west feeling like the airport is sucking up all the infrastructure dollars. He was asked what he is doing for them there. His answer to those infrastructure problems in north-west Sydney was, 'We're putting all this money into the second airport.' That second airport will not help at all the people on clogged roads or on late trains. They are now connecting another rail line to St Mary's from the airport. It isn't going to open for six years. Meanwhile, you have 200,000 people moving into north-west Sydney, the trains being late and the roads being clogged. They're not getting the support that they need. You need to decongest the rail line, connect the Metro North West—and I commend the New South Wales Liberal government for building this; I had my doubts about it, but it is a good rail system—and build the M9, which is the next motorway parallel to the M7. There is nothing about that in the budget.

When I asked Michael McCormack, the infrastructure minister, to fund Francis Road, which connects to the Mount Druitt Hospital and has ambulances on it attending to emergencies, he said, 'No, I can't.' He said, 'Should the New South Wales government prioritise the project you've mentioned, the Australian government would be prepared to consider a request for funding.' That's what he said. What happens when citizens ask for infrastructure funding to be delivered? They don't get heard. Who gets heard? The cronies get heard, like Daryl Maguire, who doesn't even represent Western Sydney—he's from Wagga Wagga. He was getting meetings with key officials in the New South Wales government, as revealed by ICAC, plus the New South Wales Premier, and getting the ear of those people for infrastructure projects and decisions around the second airport, in an area that he does not represent. He is not an MP for that area. He gets their ear, but the ordinary citizen gets ignored. It's wrong, wrong, wrong that cronies get prioritised above citizens in this case, when they're stuck in traffic and stuck on late trains. It's wrong. That's the reason, more than anything else, that I think the Premier should go out of New South Wales, in terms of allowing that to happen, turning a blind eye, allowing this to happen under the Premier's watch, with this 'can't do' minister in Andrew Constance, who couldn't fit a ferry under a bridge. They had all that stuff happen.

Then, when you look at the budget papers—this is Budget Paper No. 2—and you turn to infrastructure in New South Wales, let me read these projects. There is $600 million for the New England Highway, a coalition seat; another $600 million for the Newell Highway, a coalition seat; $490 million for the Coffs Harbour bypass, a coalition seat; $360 million for Newcastle, because you have to have some Labor in there to make it look slightly legitimate; $150 million for grade separating roads in places—I'm sure the bulk of that will go to coalition seats; $120 million for the Prospect Highway—in part that covers a Labor seat; $94 million for Heathcote Road upgrade, a coalition seat; $63 million for Dunheved Road, a marginal Liberal seat; $60 million here the M1 North Smart Motorway, largely through Liberal seats to the Warringah freeway; $46 million for Mulgoa Road upgrade, a Liberal seat.

That is coalition infrastructure spending right there. But if you're in a Labor seat and you have high growth, you get nothing—nothing at all. It's not about the needs of the citizen; it's about the needs of the politician. That's the way it's working with infrastructure. It is plain wrong. People should be getting the support that will make their lives easier.

It's not just about clearing people off clogged roads or late trains. The infrastructure projects themselves deliver jobs while the build is on, but in my part of the world, if for example you see the M7 and M9 built, you open up economic lands between those two motorways. The movement of people in between there as well means it is not just about residents; it is businesses. We transform that part of the world, as we see right now with the Sydney Business Park in Marsden Park, which is creating 60,000 direct and indirect jobs. Everyone talks about the second airport as having an impact on my area. Garbage. Having the second airport creates as much economic activity for me here as saying that Sydney Airport creates all this economic activity in Hornsby. I am sure it delivers economic activity close to where the airport is, but it doesn't uniformly deliver it. But if you get the infrastructure moving in my part of the world, there are business and industrial parks that open up that create a diversity of business opportunities in the area. New jobs get generated. This whole idea is that if you want to see locals working close by, not having to travel long distances—the 30-minute city, as it has been called—you see that actually happen.

The other thing is that by having the broader infrastructure improvements in terms of rail, stopping those late trains, seeing faster movement of people, in big cities you can have the 30-minute city, but the big productivity benefit is that you are always going to be moving people from the west to the east in a city like Sydney. You are going to need to get them into the Sydney CBD—that's a reality. So get them moving faster. Clear up the western expressway, that T1 line. Decongest that rail line. Get people moving in. Have alternative ways of moving people around by connecting up the Sydney Metro to St Marys railway station so you have the metro and the T1 connected. That's the longer-term stuff. By the way, connecting the metro up to St Marys is not in the Chifley electorate. That is in the Lindsay electorate. It's a Liberal electorate. Again, picking up on what the member for Bennelong has said about his vision, he's not arguing for high-speed rail for his electorate, he's arguing it for the nation. I'm arguing it for the city of Sydney, so we are on a unity ticket there my friend. That's the way it should work. There will be some people who'll say, 'All those projects that you read out that were in coalition seats, well the coalition won government.' It was very close, and not all projects can be in coalition seats; infrastructure dollars should be for the benefit of a broader number of Australians. That's why this budget should be condemned, because it is for pork barrels rather than people.

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