Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I want to raise an issue of great concern to the residents of Ingleburn, Macquarie Fields, Glenfield, Minto and other suburbs: the state of the crossing at the Cambridge Avenue bridge in Glenfield. The crossing at Glenfield at Cambridge Avenue is not really a bridge; it is a crossing over a causeway. It was constructed by the Defence Force in the 1940s so that they could access the Ingleburn railway station from their Moorebank and Holsworthy facilities. In 1948 the causeway was opened to the public.

The causeway provides an essential transport link to many of the residents of the south-west of Sydney. Anyone familiar with that region would know that a great number of the residents travel outside the area each day to work and many travel across the Cambridge Avenue bridge. The population growth over the last few decades has increased the use of the bridge and has highlighted some of its inherent safety problems.

I have had my own near miss with the bridge when a car came a little too close one morning when I was out running, forcing me to jump from the bridge into the river. This near miss is not an isolated incident and is, sadly, not the worst. I am aware of two fatalities that have occurred in the area, sadly, one as recently as last year when a firefighter, Steven Richardson, was killed in a head-on collision on his way to a fire.

During my by-election the state of the causeway and the inherent dangers were raised with me regularly. At the time I received advice from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence that a transport plan was being prepared and that, once commissioned, the plan would take six to nine months to complete. That was back in April 2005. A year after, the Campbelltown City Council received an almost identically worded letter from the Commonwealth. So in 12 months not only had the government not made any progress in finding a solution; it could not even be bothered updating its letter of response.

In June 2006 the parliamentary secretary informed me that the report on the proposed Moorebank freight hub was expected to be completed later that year. He also indicated that the report would outline the requirement for funding and upgrading of the transport infrastructure. I was still awaiting this report in February this year when another storm event occurred, with flooding closing the bridge to traffic, creating local chaos and shifting the traffic burden to the M5. I immediately wrote to the Minister for Defence to find out the status of the report, but to date I have not received an acknowledgement, let alone an answer to that correspondence. Like me, many local residents, including Barry Jarrett and Melissa Wellfare, continue to wait for pretty simple answers to some simple questions. Minister, what have you got to hide? (Time expired)