The Hon. ERIC ROOZENDAAL: I certainly understand the frustrations that motorists and the travelling public have experienced in relation to the delays in the M5 tunnel yesterday. I apologise to the motorists and members of the public who were caught up in those delays. The Government is taking action to audit what happened yesterday to prevent a recurrence. We will identify the reasons that the computer server crashed and take appropriate action to ensure that in future the systems operate the way they should.

The Hon. CHARLIE LYNN: I wish to ask a supplementary question: Will the Minister also advise what money has been allocated in next year’s budget to ameliorate the daily logjam on the M5. How much money is in the budget this year specifically for the M5?

The Hon. ERIC ROOZENDAAL: If the member wants details from the budget, I suggest he looks them up himself; I am not about to do his research for him. The Government is commissioning, with the Federal Government, a review of needs in that transport corridor and the potential to duplicate the M5 East. We have a record Roads budget of $4 billion. If we are going to talk about the challenge of the Sydney road network—and I think we should be talking about that—and about the challenge of congestion, we cannot go past the Opposition’s policy announced recently by the shadow Roads spokesperson, who said that the Opposition would support a congestion tax. The only other policy announced by the Opposition is the removal of cashback from the M4 and the M5. The Government remains committed to cashback, we remain committed to improving the road network, and we will never impose a congestion tax on the people of this State while we have high interest rates and high petrol prices.

The Hon. Charlie Lynn: Point of order: I asked a specific question about how much money has been allocated. I have looked in the budget papers and there is nothing in them about it. Will the Minister confirm that there is no money allocated for the M5 in this year’s budget?

The PRESIDENT: Order! There is no point of order.

The Hon. ERIC ROOZENDAAL: As I was saying, in a time of high petrol prices and high interest rates, the Opposition’s plan to introduce a congestion tax is not the way to go for Sydney, and this Government will never introduce such a tax.

M5 EAST TUNNEL

Western Sydney will be expected to absorb this expansion. With the current backlog of infrastructure development Western Sydney can expect more smog, more traffic chaos, more ‘crush’ on public transport, bigger class sizes in school and longer waiting time for public hospitals.

The decision will have a dramatic impact on our quality of life.

The rational behind the decision i.e. to prevent a wages breakout and help cap inflation has been criticised by Dr Birrell, the Director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University. Labor has a one track mind to immigration according to Dr Birrell.

They sure do. Past experience in Western Sydney indicates that more migrants means more Labor voters!

The Carr-Egan and Iemma-Costa governments have squandered the profits of the economic boom over the past decade. While the Howard-Costello partnership introduced economic reforms that broke the union stronghold on the waterfront and delivered a bonanza to the States through the introduction of a GST. Booming property prices resulted in a Land Tax windfall and the conversion of every pub in NSW into a mini-casino generated hundreds of millions of dollars in extra revenue.

Nobody seems to know where the money has gone. Trains only run on-time because they changed the timetables. Hospital waiting lists are not as long because they changed the definition of ‘waiting-times’. Crime statistics are down because they removed serious crimes from the list – Campbelltown is now safer than Vaucluse.
The list goes on. When one looks at the list of announcements, re-announcements and revised definitions it is clear that we are the victims of a clever smoke and mirrors campaign.

Michael Costa now has to put the State in debt to try and catch up with current planned growth. Kevin Rudd’s plan to dump an extra 350,000 immigrants in Western Sydney will blow the integrity of Costa’s budget and will have a devastating impact on the quality of life in Western Sydney.