Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One of the most prevalent themes that comes out of north-west Sydney is a lack of foresight and a lack of delivery when it comes to essential infrastructure. This is a particularly pronounced problem where you have such huge rates of residential growth, where you have population explosions, where you have paddocks that once were home to a few cows and which have become all of a sudden suburbs in their own right, seemingly overnight in some cases. One of the key reasons for this is this goes directly to peoples' quality of life—how long it takes for the commute, how hard it is to do the school drop-off and pick-up and, overall, how this impacts on their life and daily wellbeing. So today I want to talk about this stifling lack of infrastructure investment by both the federal and state Liberal governments that continues to pervade north-west Sydney, and it's an issue I've raised many times in this place. People of north-west Sydney deserve nothing but the best local infrastructure.

I've got rafts of suburbs in my community without access to reliable internet. They're saddled with patchy mobile coverage, and they're forced to take slow public transport on congested roads because their governments have left them behind. That's why a couple of months ago I launched my Let's Kickstart Greenway's Economy petition, calling for cooperation at all levels of government to stimulate our economy by bringing forward infrastructure spending. And I identified what I thought were a couple of transformation projects that could really make a difference, and I sought feedback on these. I want to thank the thousands upon thousands of residents who have engaged in this process with me. Projects like the Bandon Road upgrade in Riverstone and actually delivering the twice promised but yet to be constructed hospital at Rouse Hill would really help keep local tradies on the tools and money flowing to local small businesses, and that's what an infrastructure-led recovery is all about. It's not about flashy advertisements in local papers or electronic billboards in our shopping centres.

I want to acknowledge the thousands of residents who not only gave support to this petition but have been fighting for many, many years to upgrade the Prospect Highway. The Prospect Highway is essentially where the M4 and the Great Western Highway meet Blacktown. Essentially, it is a goat track; it is a bottleneck that just will not quit. And it is long overdue for an upgrade. I'm so pleased that, thanks to the pressure from both state representatives and Greenway residents, we got $120 million committed in this federal budget for an upgrade, and I won't stop until we actually see this delivered.