Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I say with absolute conviction that in Lalor we are building the Australia of the future, but we are not there yet. There is still work to be done. As Lalor and the city of Wyndham transition from a growth corridor to a maturing city, the needs of our community are also changing. Infrastructure, services, education and planning must keep pace. We must continue to build that future now. That is why I continue to advocate fiercely for roads, schools, child care, health services, aged care, education and public transport.

We have already seen incredible investment in Lalor under the Albanese Labor government. It's really important because it was past time for the Commonwealth to support this burgeoning part of the world after a decade of neglect from the former government and its three prime ministers who ignored our needs and left us supporting government with our contributions but with little in return. I speak of major infrastructure and transport. The former government made not a single contribution to a major infrastructure project in the electorate of Lalor in over a decade in office, despite commitments from me across three elections to start the Wyndham Ring Road. It is a priority for local government, it's a priority for state government and, pleasingly, now it has federal support to see it completed.

The Labor Party in opposition committed $57 million to the Ison Road Overpass in the 2016 and 2019 election campaigns, and, having won government in 2022, delivered 50 per cent of funding to see it built. I stand here proud to say that that section is complete. It is complete, and the state and local governments are now completing the road from the foot of the bridge to Wests Road. This is a transport corridor that will see the people in our growing community travel, rather than through the heart of Werribee, around the edge onto the M1.

The federal government has also honoured its commitment announced last year for $125 million to upgrade the main road and M1 interchange, and works are underway, with temporary lights being constructed now, as a priority, to see people exit the freeway safely on their way home from work. This is a problem that has occurred with our growth and with neglect from the former federal government, with them not finding it in their hearts or their purse to support our growing community. This has meant that, as the houses have come, people have used the existing roads to get to the freeway. They're crossing a rail line on an ancient part of the road to get through a new suburb again and onto the M1 freeway. This has meant that on the return journey we have people on the M1 exit and drive in the emergency lane for kilometres. Well, that stops now. It stopped with our election. It stopped when state government took our funds and started work immediately.

We've had a traffic light put on the road to create a break so that traffic can come off that freeway, and right now they are putting in the temporary lights so that we can get on with the complex work of seeing stage 1 of this ring road completed. I'm really pleased to say that this federal government is making its contribution with half the funding for that M1 main road interchange to be modernised and for the bridge to be widened there to make sure that people can move freely to and from work.

As well as that, this government is delivering $41.75 million to update the intersection of Ballan, McGrath and Greens roads on Ballan Road, again in partnership with the state Labor government. We're giving $13.2 million over five years via Roads to Recovery for local roads upgrades in Wyndham, including Sayers Road, Priorswood Drive, Warringa Crescent, Danube Drive and Ashton Crescent, and a further $2.3 million for local active transport infrastructure—walking and cycling paths—via the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program. This is really important work. It will see stage 1 complete of the Wyndham Ring Road. I was really pleased at the election to be able to announce $85 million to build a bridge to start stage 2 at the other end of this road to get a bridge over the Werribee River that will connect Tarneit and Wyndham Vale, that will join those two burgeoning communities and suburbs and reduce congestion across our city.

People don't understand that in growth corridors we talk about how long it takes to get to work. We talk about the trip on the major freeways. But in my community it can take 45 minutes to get to the freeway because we are crossing a city that used to take six minutes to cross and now, with traffic and more and more houses, can take 45 minutes. On a Saturday morning, with families coming from one side of the city of Wyndham to the other to take their kids to sport, is when most people feel the pinch most acutely, because that snarl can last for hours.

We've also made other commitments. I was pleased to attend the opening of the Galvin Park Sexton Pavilion. I made a commitment at the 2022 election to make a contribution of half a million dollars to the new Sexton Pavilion at Galvin Park. But we are doing more. We have federal backing for mental health and wellbeing services in local schools, including for reinstating the local GP training priorities for Wyndham. One of the most significant recent additions to our local health services has been the Werribee Medicare urgent care clinic. I was pleased during the campaign to be there with the Prime Minister. This service is already reducing pressure on the local emergency department. It provides fast, bulk-billed care for urgent but non-life-threatening conditions. It ensures families in the electorate of Lalor and in the city of Wyndham can access care when they need it, close to home and without the cost burden. The day during the campaign that I was there with the Prime Minister we did proudly say that already 20,000 patients had been through this urgent care clinic in my community. I know the difference that is making to the Mercy public hospital's emergency department as it waits for the state government to complete the new emergency department. It's on foot right now, being built as we speak. Health is important to the Labor government. The Albanese Labor government are not just delivering projects; we are delivering progress in health.

We are responding to the needs I hear every day. From parents desperate for local education options to young apprentices needing access to quality training to seniors seeking aged-care support, we are delivering in each of these areas. While we are talking about connections, let me highlight how we stay connected. I have been holding mobile offices in local community centres across my electorate. I've been pleased to see people take up the opportunity to come and tell me about their priorities and their concerns.

But there are two other things I want to talk about in this address in reply that I think are critical. One is the outer metropolitan ring road development. I highlight the plan for the E6 outer metropolitan ring road. While it may not all run directly through Lalor, its regional importance is unquestionable. We saw that highlighted recently with the M1 closed completely and traffic banked back from Geelong and Wyndham. That is hundreds of thousands of people not getting to their destination because we rely on one road. We need an alternative. That happened on 11 June this year and it has happened since where we have had a similar situation. It's important for the burgeoning west of Melbourne that this project see the light of day, that this project get started now. I would suggest strongly that it needs to start at the Wyndham end to make sure that our western suburbs communities have an alternative. Geelong and the west need an alternative to the M1.

There was something else that I wanted to talk about. When I became the member for Lalor, it was off the back of working in education, obviously, but also work as a community advocate, as a grassroots activist. One of the toughest jobs, when you're leading a campaign in a local community—against government, against business or whatever it's about—is to ensure that all the people who care deeply about it and who come together do so in an appropriate way. It is one of the most critical things. I was absolutely appalled a couple of weekends ago, when people involved in community activism came and visited my electorate—and some locals joined them—to talk about something that they feel is unfair. That is fair enough. But to come into the electorate of Lalor and stand in front of signs saying 'Ditch the bitch' is beyond the pale. Not in my electorate—not now, not ever.

This is the home, the seat, of former prime minister Julia Gillard. To bring those slurs into my community and to have people stand in front of those signs and re-create, knowingly or unknowingly, a scenario that my community completely rejects hinders the activists when it comes to people hearing their message, because all we saw was a re-creation of the misogyny that our community rejects. So, I call on those who were involved in this to think carefully. You cannot run community campaigns unless you can run yourselves, to be blunt—unless you can reflect and understand that your cause is damaged by that kind of behaviour.

I want to send that message strongly to those activists in my community who found themselves caught in a situation where they were near posters that carried those kinds of misogynistic messages. I don't care who the messages are for, and I don't care who wrote the signs. The misogyny is in the language, and it shouldn't have happened in my electorate. It shouldn't happen anywhere in the country. It shouldn't have happened. The things that it re-created happened out the front of this building. They shouldn't have happened then, they shouldn't be re-created in Victoria now, and they certainly shouldn't be visited upon my community.

To those activists: please, think about the way you're presenting yourselves. You're diminishing any argument you had. People have a right to protest; I firmly believe that. People have a right to demonstrate. People have a right to call upon government to change a policy. People have a right to do that in every community across the country. But people do not have a right to spread misogynistic slander and to ask other people to take that in their stride. I won't take it in mine, and I'll stand against it every time I see it.

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