Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I, along with many of the constituents in my area, rise to express my concerns about the supposed solution for Sydney's intermodal transport needs. I am very glad that the member for Fowler is here in the chamber today because this issue also affects many constituents in his electorate.

The government proposes to build a freight intermodal terminal in Moorebank on the site where the School of Military Engineering is currently located. I have five major concerns about it. My first concern is the cost. We are talking about spending $900 million—almost $1 billion—simply to relocate the School of Military Engineering. To relocate it, to take the existing facilities and move them five kilometres away, to clear the land will cost the Australian taxpayer close to $1 billion. So before we have even turned a single sod on the intermodal project we are close to $1 billion worth of cost. My second concern is that the intermodal at Moorebank is built on a completely false premise that it will take trucks off the road, particularly off the M5. A recent independent analysis has been done by Paul van den Bos, who is an expert in this area, and he has confirmed that it is simply a fallacy that the intermodal will take trucks off the M5. My third concern is that it will create traffic nightmares in our local area. Already where we live—which is part of my electorate and overlaps with the member for Fowler's electorate—has traffic problems. A report a few weeks ago in the Daily Telegraphsaid that the Hume Highway in Liverpool has been named as Sydney's most notorious black spot with at least 183 crashes reported in the last 12 months, to June 2012. That is 183 crashes in 12 months on one short strip of road on the Hume Highway in Liverpool. The proposal is to put several thousand trucks—several thousand B-doubles and B-triples—on that road, adding to the congestion on that road. This is completely unacceptable for the people of Liverpool and for the people who use the Hume Highway.

Another concern with the traffic is that our other local roads, such as Nuwarra, Moorebank and Heathcote roads, simply are not designed to handle the increased number of B-doubles that will be using it and moving container trucks. There is also a concern with the crossing at the Georges River on the M5. Currently, the proposal has only a 350-metre gap for trucks to merge and move lanes. So we will have a major expressway where cars are going 100 kilometres an hour, and the trucks will have to go basically from a standing start, cross into that traffic and merge across three lanes in the space of 350 metres. The traffic experts tell us that this is a disaster waiting to happen.

The fourth reason why the Moorebank intermodal is a bad proposal—not only for the local residents but for all of Sydney—is that it is simply not in the right location. If you look at a map of where the containers in Sydney actually need to go, the majority of containers that will be sent from the Moorebank intermodal will go to north-west Sydney. So we are actually not reducing traffic movements at all. Instead of those trucks starting from Port Botany, they will be starting their journey from Moorebank and going to the north-western parts of Sydney.

The fifth reason is the pollution. Liverpool already has one of the highest levels of airborne pollution of all of Sydney, and all of Australia. In fact, if you look at the current levels of asthma, in almost every age bracket Liverpool has a much higher level of asthma. There is a better solution. This is not about 'not in my backyard.' Eastern Creek has already been recommended by many studies as the best location for Sydney. In fact, the report titled Railing Port Botany's containers: proposals to ease Sydney's pressure on roads concludes that in order to provide a large intermodal for western Sydney, it is recommended that Eastern Creek be confirmed as the preferred site. Further, a 2007 review by the Infrastructure Implementation Group has also recommended that Eastern Creek be the preferred location for Sydney's intermodal. I hope that the government will have a look at this. Moorebank is not the right location for this. (Time expired)