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

One of the reasons I'm in this place is to try and make life better for my electorate, which is now, by population, the biggest electorate in the country and growing twice as fast as the next-biggest electorate. We're growing by over five per cent a year. In the last 10 years, my electorate has dramatically changed from basically a semirural area to a dormitory city for Sydney. Farms that I've known in the last 40 years have now changed to suburbs like Willowdale and Gregory Hills. A whole range of different little towns have been turned into these huge suburbs.

In the last 10 years, we have really lacked any reasonable infrastructure development by state and federal coalition governments. From the Abbott years to the Turnbull years to the Morrison years, Macarthur was neglected under the coalition. I made many, many calls on previous infrastructure ministers, including, most notably, the member for Bradfield, now the Manager of Opposition Business. When he was infrastructure minister, I begged him to make a rail link from Macarthur to Western Sydney airport and to upgrade Appin Road, which is a really important road connecting the Illawarra to Wollondilly, Camden, Appin and greater Macarthur, through to Sydney. Nothing was done.

I really would like to just focus for a few seconds on Appin Road. Appin Road is a single-lane road each way. It's now a conduit from the port of Wollongong through Macarthur to Sydney and also through to Western Sydney airport and the north. As I said, it's a single lane each way. It separates the Georges River and the Nepean River, and it's home to the last healthy urban colony of koalas in Australia. I begged previous environment and infrastructure ministers, including Josh Frydenberg, the previous member for Kooyong, and Melissa Price, the member for Durack, when she was environment minister, to try and do something to put in koala protections and to develop a Twin Rivers koala park. We even had the environment ministers from the state come out and visit the area and agree that we needed to turn this into a koala protection area and put in safety improvements to the roads.

We shouldn't forget that almost 30 people have died on Appin Road in the last 40 years—absolute tragedies—including some people that I knew very well, like teachers of my children and one patient of mine, who died on Appin Road in motor vehicle accidents. It's an absolute shocker—terrible—and continues to this day. We had a near-fatal accident the week before last, and that person is in hospital with multiple injuries. This is terrible. I approached the coalition about this multiple times. I virtually begged for it to be done.

We had Angus Taylor, the shadow Treasurer and the member for Hume, make lots of announcements about improvements to Appin Road and commuter car parks for Campbelltown. The only infrastructure that he came out and announced which happened was Wedderburn Bridge, which I actually got the funding for, yet he refused to have me at the opening of it. It's a tragedy that the coalition government behaved in this way. The comments from those opposite today are really—if I can use medical terms—a lot of renal output and flatus, because they don't believe what they say. They did nothing for the most rapidly growing electorate in the country, and it's a great, great shame. The people of Macarthur know this all too well. We know because that's what happened in south-west Sydney in the latest state election. South-west Sydney delivered for Labor because of the neglect of federal and state Liberal governments.

The member for Gippsland has targeted the increase in people coming to Australia. Well, we are now a huge multicultural electorate. I'm proud of that, and I'm proud of the way that people who have come to my electorate are contributing to Australian society. I love the fact that their kids are growing up as young Australians who will contribute to our society in the future. The dog whistling from the other side and the lack of support for my electorate of Macarthur are just a great shame. Mismanagement, underfunding, no proper infrastructure for a rapidly growing electorate—that's all we've got from the coalition, and they should be ashamed of themselves.

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