House debates

Thursday, 30 March 2017

Statements by Members

Blaxland Electorate: Stacey Street

1:33 pm

Photo of Jason ClareJason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | | Hansard source

Stacey Street in my electorate is the fourth slowest road in all of Sydney. In fact, it is the slowest road in Sydney outside the CBD. It is the seventh slowest road in all of Australia. In fact, it is the seventh slowest road in all of Australia and New Zealand. That is the conclusion of this report by Austroads that was released only a couple of months ago.

The report says that the average speed on Stacey Street is only 18 kilometres an hour and that the street is used by about 60,000 motor vehicles every day. It sometimes takes 40 minutes just to travel five kilometres. So it is a major bottleneck in my electorate. It is a major bottleneck for all of Sydney. It is caused by three lanes merging into two. The solution is pretty simple. We just need three lanes all the way from the M5 Motorway all the way through to the Hume Highway.

The Liberal state government have promised that they would fix this. They made that commitment at the last state election. We are still waiting for that. The people of my community are sick of being forgotten by Liberal governments, state and federal, whether it is cuts to our schools, whether it is what we have seen happen so terribly at Bankstown hospital, or whether it is roads like this or cuts to penalty rates. So I call on the state government: make good on your promise and fix Stacey Street once and for all.