Thank you all for coming here tonight especially those that came by the M4.  

Residents of Penrith know the frustration of the M4 at peakhour well, 60% of the workers in Penrith leave Penrith to go to work.. 

This weeks Penrith Press had the police lamenting the dangers of the Northern Rd exit from the M4 at peak hour that you all used.  It is a problem exacerbated by the previous Labor government trying to fix the traffic jams exiting Glenmore Park in the mornings.  After 17 years Labor managed to move the traffic jams from traveling north in the mornings on Northern Rd to traveling south on Parker St in the mornings. There is an additional traffic jam now on the M4 offramp to Northern Rd when traveling east.   

Unfortunately with the same advisers at the wheel the RMS is proposing to ‘fix’ to the Russel St exit in the same way 2km further down the M4 at Leonay.  

Corporate knowledge is a valuable thing and that is what I bring to you tonight. In announcing road projects we can’t pretend real consultation has happened when the local road users who use the streets every day can see how an ‘improvement’ is just shifting the traffic jam.   

The biggest traffic jam for Penrith residents is the M4. The Westconnex “the most important piece of infrastructure for NSW” risks just moving traffic jams unless local users are listened to. At the moment Westconnex just connects the M4 to the M5, two carparks, which is ok if you are going to the airport from Penrith but not ok if you are going to the city to work.  The carpark at James Ruse Overpass and the end of the M4 is just moved  to Annandale and residents have to wait until 2023 for it to be completed and have to pay a toll for the next 50 years. We also know that (just like the M4) one lane will closed as soon as it is opened to allow for road works to widen it when thos extra lanes should have been planned for at this stage. 

How come Barangaroo was approved in May last year and I can already see half a building coming out of the site.  

How many projects have been approved for Sydney’s roads and not started.   As I wait on the M4 every morning for 4 lanes to merge into two at the James Ruse Overpass I just wish I could see the pylons of a duplication overpass coming out of the ground nearby. Everyone knows it has to be duplicated - just start it and give commuters some hope as we drive past at 10km/hr.  

 I was in Canberra frecently and had time to drive around my old haunts down there. I saw 5 over passes and under passes that were not there when I left in 2007. On top of that the whole of the Majura Rd to the highway was being duplicated.  

How is it that a population similar to Blacktown’s (300,000) can afford so much infrastructure in the last 7 years, same country,   same taxes?. I can’t remember when the last over pass in Blacktown or Penrith was built. When we talk about the Jane St extension there is no mention of an overpass so desperately needed over Castlereagh Rd, just bigger intersections.  Everyone knows Mulgoa Rd has to be widened to 3 lanes each way. How come the only development I see along Mulgoa Rd is high density housing encroaching right into where the road widening has to occur?? Are planners mad???  Don’t they live here and know Mulgoa Rd has to be widened? And not for a bike path from Glenmore Park but for the future traffic in the area.  

When Wet n Wild was approved Village Road Show had to hand over money for local road upgrades. Only the M4 exit from Sydney was upgraded not the one from Penrith.  Not even a set of traffic lights at Reservoir Rd.  Just moving the traffic jams.  While we are in that area why can’t I go from the M4 carpark in the mornings to the Great Western Highway via Prospect Highway, this is an obvious out when accidents and the like choke the M4 in peak hour.

 I loved Jason Morrison’s article in yesterdays Telegraph it sums up everything that is wrong with my life at the moment.

 I travel the M4 daily and have errands all over Western Sydney for kids sport and play dates. My husband and I were invited to a friends place in Strathfield for dinner one evening at 7pm.  It was a fine night night there were no accidents, we left at 6 to get there by 6.40 but just because there were two events on at Homebush we got there at 9pm.  Nearly 3 hours to get to a friends place for a casual dinner.  

 It didn’t help that we tried to take a short cut down Rawson Rd between The Cresent and Civic at Auburn - but at 8pm at night I thought we were pretty safe.  We weren’t - this city is gridlocked, at all hours, on all days of the week.  

I fought long and hard for the North Penrith Army land to be a premier CBD site when I was in Federal Parliament. It has been extremely galling to see the stamp duties grab that has happened since. Landcoms planning decisions means that we now have our own Rawson St between Castlereagh St and Lemongrove Rd.  We could have sunk the railway line between Station St and Lemongrove and had a modern CBD that was not sliced by the rail line like Parramatta and Auburn. 

Again the developers of the ADI site had to upgrade the Northern Rd as part of the development. Where is the upgrade? Nearly all the houses are built!!! Plenty more users on our roads but still no improvement on existing roads. 

I know for most north shore residents Military Rd is a bleeding sore and I don’t begrudge you your tunnel under the Spit Bridge for an instant - but if you think that is all that is required to fix the gridlock of Sydneysiders lives, you are sorely mistaken.  All of Sydney is gridlocked. Not just Military Rd and the Pacific Highway From workers trying to make it onto the M5 from Northern Rd in the morning, from workers going down Richmond Rd at 7am, don’t try coming home up Pennant Hills Rd to the M2 from Parramatta at 5pm, throw in wet weather, accidents, breakdowns, a truck a month getting stuck in a tunnel and you realise why  tradesmen charge so much compared to Brisbane or Melbourne to come to you (some one has to pay for travel time).  I spent 4 hours one day driving from an autoelectrician in Hurstville over to a parts place on Parramatta Road and back to Cabarita with the parts I needed.  I am not alone in this frustration of a gridlocked city and disappointment in the inaction by developers, councils and public servants and politicians to do anything about it in a reasonable time for a reasonable price.

Western Sydney residents holiday on the Gold Coast where there is a 6 lane highway connecting a population of 600,000 with a population of 2 million in Brisbane.  There’s 4.5 million people in Sydney and there is not a 6 lane highway anywhere in Sydney.  

More buslanes and bike paths won’t cut it.  You can’t shop for a family of four in western sydney using public transport, or a bike.

Nor can you make all school commitments with public transport, the car is here to stay and we had better build the roads and car parks to allow it to be a pleasant experience. 

The residents of Western Sydney are committed to an urban life that is at least reasonable in the balance between pollution and convenience, green space and housing, raising kids and commuter times.  

Let’s get rid of the gridlock. Borrow if we have to, toll as a last resort but get it the infrastructure built, and do it for a reasonable price.

 When the M7 opened house prices in Bidwell and Rooty Hill soared.  As land is sold in areas with efficient infrastructure the State government reaps the benefits of increased amounts of stamp duty on inflated house prices.

The savings in travel times due to efficient infrastructure is such a boost to productivity for jobs in Western Sydney we don’t need artificial ways to lower unemployment such as decentralisation.   

If we put the trains not the cars in the tunnels and made the commuter stations under the Westfields and Plazas where people are actually going - you could shop for a family of 4 by public transport.   Freight rail can and does work efficiently with commuter rail in other countries why not Australia.  

 Our rail lines around Sydney then become available for roads which are connected at each intersection not slicing suburbs in half like the train tracks from Penrith to Strathfield.

Residents also want value for money. Is it right to spend $1000 per metre on a footpath when concrete cost $50 per metre?  Is it right to spend 1.5 million on bike paths in Penrith that are not connected and go nowhere.  Is it right that every year 3000 maternity patients and their relatives have to pay to $6 per visit to a new mother because of a lack of planning for car parking around Nepean Hospital. 

First time mothers are being sent home within 24 hours of giving birth so maybe that is not as big a problem anymore. But carparking around our train stations is a  problem that is not going away no matter how many craparks appear. The planners never seem to visit the station and just count the cars currently using the stations existing carparks and triple it for future growth.  Once a commuter carpark is paved, less cars can park there, than when it was just a grassy area. How is that possible?   Then there is the $25m for a Green bridge for joggers over the Nepean River. Joggers that will run the Great River Walk when it is completed out to the lakes anyway. The Penrith Council is planning a fine weather walkway over the weir which joggers can use but let’s waste $25m on a foot bridge for the 50 pedestrians per day that get from Emu Plains to Penrith by foot.  Why not make it a dual lane bridge with a footbridge on it and fix 40,000 commuters problems as the drive form Emu Plains to Penrith. Hawkesbury has a dual lane road bridge for $70 million no one wants why not combine the money and fix a traffic jam rather than move it.     Corporate knowledge comes in handy. I live there I know the users - the rowers, the joggers, the mothers with prams and young kids learning to ride and the 53 actual pedestrians (none in winter).  A duplicated road bridge with a footpath would be  ecstatically welcomed. 

 Western Sydney is gridlocked and the idea of spending even $1 billion on an airport at Badgery’s Creek is so in the face of the type of infrastructure we really need I will lead the charge against the airport as I did from 1996 until 2004 when John Howard decided Mascot has sufficient capacity for the next 50 years.   John Hoawrd was not wrong.   At the last AGM for Sydney Airport the CEO told shareholders (and ASIC imposes heavy penalties fro misleading investors) that Sydney airport has 37% of Sydney's regulated runway movement cap still available for future growth. Also since the year 2000 there has been a 46% increase in passengers with less than 3% increase in aircraft take offs and landings as a result of larger aircraft.  Therefore even at a growth of over 3% every 13 years it is over 100 years from now before Sydney airport utilises the remaining 37% of capacity at Sydney airport.  And that is with the existing restrictions of 80 movements per hour.  80 movements per hour on twin runways gives a 90 second separation when most major airports work on 20-30 seconds. Operated like JFK in New York Mascot could handle 300 movements an hour. Then there is the third of the day the airport is subject to a curfew. An asset like Mascot lying idle for a third of the day and we will spend $5 billion to duplicate it?  Badgerys Creek is not needed for the next 50-100 years let us spend our current resources wisely and fix the infrastructure lag in western sydney.

 By spending the $5 billion proposed to be spent at Badgerys Creek on infrastructure around Western Sydney we can get out of gridlock in this generation and safeguard our children’s future in Sydney so their commute time are substantially less than ours. 

Residents of Western Sydney can have their pick of extra lanes on the M4/M5, extra lanes on Elizabeth Drive, Bringelly Rd, Northern Rd, a train from Leppington to Penrith/Richmond, a very fast train from Badgerys Creek to Mascot/Port Botany/Parramatta/Chatswood, a very fast train from Penrith to the CBD. The list is endless. 

If 28,000 jobs were to be created by Badgerys Creek Airport that would be 56,000 more movements on our Western Sydney roads just for the workers.  At 28,000 workers Mascot services 39 million passengers a year who all have to get to and from the airport.  That is 72 million more movements on our roads.  Then there is the freight, then the support services etc.  

This all impacts on the 2 million people who live in Western Sydney and don’t work at the airport.  If jobs is your only reason for supporting an airport at Badgerys then please think to the future urban environment we leave our children in 2050 - when Badgerys Creek Airport is planned to employ 28,000 people and services 36 million PAX.  

If aircraft noise is not a problem then why are there so many anti-aircraft websites associated with Mascot airport.  The lobby groups who want relief from noise aircraft at Mascot have achieved a curfew and noise insulation programs and will not stop until there is no noise at Mascot ie a replacement airport. Unless there are similar lobby groups associated with Badgerys Creek we could get all the noise.

According to Australian Standard AS2021-2000 residential use should not occur at greater than 25 ANEF and is ‘acceptable’ at less than 20 ANEF.

The noise issues got so bad following the opening of the third runway in 1995 that a noise insulation program was established to ameliorate the impact of aircraft noise. Residential properties in the Australian Noise Exposure Forecast (ANEF) 30 contour and public buildings (schools, churches, day care centres and hospitals) in the ANEF 25 contour were eligible for assistance under the programs. All eligible residential properties have had the opportunity to be insulated under the programs.

The program has been effective in reducing the impacts of aircraft noise on homes and public buildings under flight paths. At a combined cost in excess of $470 million,   the airport noise program has insulated 4,083 homes and 99 public buildings affected by noisy planes.  

There is no plan to curfew Badgerys Creek or insulate the houses surrounding the area.  For $5 billion you could noise insulate every house affected by noise from Mascot and run 24 hour operations.

 
The Federal Government will build the airport on land that it owns but the surrounding infrastructure and connecting roads is the responsibility of the State government.  The State government has indicated it does not have the money for roads around an airport in Western Sydney and that its roads and infrastructure budget for the next ten years is fully committed.

"But I reiterate that any such decision has to come with the funding package to ensure that the transport links are going to be appropriate. I note that when it cost between $35 million to $40 million a kilometre to build the M7, when it's costing around $80 million a kilometre to build the south-west rail link, reports today of a $200 million transport funding package seem to be missing a zero," Barry OFarrell said. 

If Badgerys Creek goes ahead as currently planned then the supporting infrastructure is way off in the distance - if at all as there are NO current plans for it or its funding.

 The cabinet subcommittee established by the Prime Minister consisting of Tony Abbott, Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss, Treasurer Joe Hockey and Assistant Infrastructure Minister Jamie Briggs has no western sydney resident on it who actually uses the roads daily.  Yet they will tell us what our problems are and how to solve them.   So far their ideas are:

1 To extend the Southwest rail link from Leppington to Penrith via Badgerys Creek

2 To connect Penrith to Richmond by rail

3 Put two lanes each way on Elizabeth Drive from Northern Rd to the M7 via Badgerys Creek

4 Put in high capacity bulk fuel line from Mascot to Badgerys Creek

5 Put an extra lane on the M5 each way. 

6 Put an extra lane on Camden Valley Way from the Northern Rd to the M5

7 Upgrade Northern Rd from Penrith to Campbelltown

8 Upgarde Bringelly Rd from Northern Rd to Camden Valley Way

9 Upgrade Narellan Rd from the Northern Rd to the Hume Highway

10 Upgrade Cowpasture Rd 

Please note that ‘upgrade’ does not necessarily mean an extra lane.

Here is what the State government plans in the next ten years.

1 A two lane bridge at Windsor

2 M4 ramps at Prospect and Werrington, upgrades at Russel St

3 Upgrades at Northern Rd George St even though an easement exists to run the two roundabouts together and get rid of a traffic jam altogether

4 Upgrade Prospect Highway

5 Upgrade Richmond Rd

6 Overpass at Riverstone rail crossing

7 Schofields Rd upgrade

8 Werrington Arterial Rd from Great Western Highway to M4

9 Campbelltown Rd upgrade through Denham Court

10 $125m in a pinch point program targeting traffic congestion

11 Westconnex

I guess we are stuck with the M4 as it is when it desperately needs to be 6 lanes each way just like the Gold Coast Highway to Brisbane.

Rawson Rd at Auburn and around Strathfield will remain the same and no overpasses or underpasses will be built in Penrith or Blacktown. But we will get a few footpaths and bike paths and a foot bridge instead.

I believe I have the vision, the ability to listen and discuss and develop local projects to locals needs and the drive and motivation to get the projects through the bureaucracy for a reasonable price.