Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When you live in Hawkesbury Heights, you live in one of the most bush surrounded suburbs in the Blue Mountains—on the escarpment above the Nepean River and overlooking the Hawkesbury and Penrith regions with a clear and quiet view to Sydney. But heaven forbid if you are a mum who wants to push a pram to the lookout or a Dad who wants to take the kids for a bike ride, or if you want to let your children ride to school, or if you are a person with a disability who uses a walking stick or frame for assistance—because, if that is the case, you cannot go anywhere in Hawkesbury Heights without walking on the road. There are only three streets and one happens to be the major north-south thoroughfare, Hawkesbury Road, which cars and trucks make their way along, which means people cannot. That is why the community is desperate for a shared bike path and walking trail to run parallel to Hawkesbury Road and link the community to its own lookout but, more importantly, to the major centre of Winmalee, where the schools and shops are. It is a five-minute drive and a four-kilometre distance.

While Labor at a state and federal level has backed the community on this issue, the Liberals have not. Requests for a path to be built were ignored by my predecessor. We are not talking about a major piece of engineering; it would be a crushed granite path, along a route that is still fairly clear from the 2013 fires. It would transform the lives of people who do not deserve to have to take their lives in their hands just to get to school.