Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry and Innovation) | Link to this | Hansard source

Our part of north-western Sydney is booming in residential numbers and it will continue to do so into the future. People are moving further and further out west, chasing a dream—a home they can enjoy to raise a family, to live and to have a comfortable life. But that dream is turning into a nightmare. It is largely because in the outer suburbs people are finding that the infrastructure is not keeping pace and is not helping them. Case in point: Richmond Road, in my neck of the woods, from Dean Park, Glendenning, Colebee to Marsden Park, that road is always choked in both directions, peak hour, nonpeak hour, weekdays, weekends. It is always the same and it is simply intolerable for people spending a lot of time trying to get to where they need to, and industry is worried they are losing the ability to maintain their operations in our part of Western Sydney.

This week the government announced two things. They said they would put in money to plan for the future upgrade of that road. That is fine, and this comes after writing to Michael McCormack, as the former minister, to Barnaby Joyce to Paul Fletcher and to Andrew Constance. But, as my constituents rightly point out, $50 million for planning instead of the hard cash to do the widening of the road beggars belief. We need that infrastructure support and we need it now.