Minister for Transport, and Minister for Roads

Debate resumed from an earlier hour.

Mr FAHEY (Southern Highlands - Premier, and Minister for Economic Development) [7.30]: Prior to the dinner break, I was referring to the fact that the honourable member for Kogarah had spent some considerable time suggesting that the M2 motorway proposal was being put together because the Minister for Transport, and Minister for Roads was about polluting the air and playing up to the oil companies. The record shows that this Government was the first to move to decrease lead in petrol at a time when the Commonwealth Government was not prepared, after much discussion, to abolish lead in petrol within a time frame. The New South Wales Government said, "There has to be an end to lead in petrol". The Government moved unilaterally on the issue, which reflected its concern for the environment and the atmosphere.

The honourable member for Kogarah has indicated to me that he will play up for the remaining eight minutes of my contribution because members of his local branch are in the public gallery. He is welcome to do that if he so wishes. It is a shame, however, that they were not present in the public gallery to hear his pitiful contribution to the debate. The honourable member has no idea what the motion is about; he certainly did not address any of the issues which may have given substance to the motion. There is no substance to the motion whatsoever.

As I said earlier, this motion is not about the M2 motorway; it is about preventing job creation in this State and stopping progress. That is the approach Labor takes in relation to all matters in this State. At every opportunity it seeks to pull back progress. The job factor in relation to this project alone ought to be supported by all members of the House, particularly those who purport to look after the worker. The Labor Party has abandoned the workers. It has done nothing to support employment programs that this Government has established - ahead of any other State - particularly in the last 12 months.

The record of the Minister for Transport is outstanding. In debate on a motion such as this - which claims that the Minister is no longer competent to hold a position in the ministry - one must examine the relevant Minister's record. The Minister for Transport has served the ministry well; his performance has been excellent over the past 6½ years across his entire portfolio. The establishment of parking stations at railway stations allows commuters to park their cars, to get on trains, and to get around the city conveniently on a rail system which has improved out of sight. The record shows that on-time running of services has reached 90 per cent. That has been achieved by the State Rail Authority under the control and leadership of this Minister.

I refer to the operation of motor registry offices in this State. All motorists must register their vehicles and obtain licences on a regular basis. In the past there has been considerable discontent about the manner in which that service was delivered in motor registry offices. That is not the case any more. Surveys show that the service delivered in motor registry offices has improved out of sight. As a result of reforms initiated by the Minister in that area the customer satisfaction rate is of the order of 75 per cent.

People in the private bus industry of this State will tell honourable members, as they have told the honourable member for Kogarah time and time again, that they have seen progress in the industry that they could only have dreamed about under Labor. That progress has been accomplished by this Minister. Bus services have been brought up to standard in relation to safety - they are second to none. More than anything else the Minister deserves credit for what he has done with respect to public transport and road safety. As I said earlier, many people of this State are alive today because of this competent, outstanding Minister. He has addressed the issues and initiated progress in a way the community respects.

It seems that every time this Government wants to progress a contract for infrastructure that will benefit the community, the Labor Party tries to stop it. We have seen the advent of a new rail line to the airport. That project is about urban renewal. The Government is saying to the people who live in that area and the thousands who go to that area that they do not need to have a car and that they will be able to travel conveniently from those suburbs. It is a sensible investment, given the congestion that occurs in the region between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. and 6 p.m., when everyone wants to be in the city circle on that rail line. There will be additional lines and flexibilities. Nowhere in Australia have we seen such progress in roads. Nowhere in Australia, possibly in the western world, have we seen such progress in transport generally than we have seen over the past 6½ years in this State under this Minister. He has carried out his responsibilities in an impeccable fashion and in a manner the whole community recognises.

I refer again to the M2. The excuse for this motion - and it is no more than an excuse to disrupt this Parliament, to stop the progress of the Government and its agenda - comes down to this: the Opposition claims that the M2 contract prohibits competition from public transport. That is absolutely incorrect. The contract does not guarantee that there will be no competition from public transport, nor does it guarantee that the M2 proponent will automatically receive compensation from the Government if an alternative public transport link is built. The Minister for Transport has referred to the harbour tunnel. We know that year in year out, whatever happens, there will be a taxpayer contribution in that regard.

This State knows that no true competitive approach was taken in relation to that project. It was rushed through the House in the stealth of the night by the previous Government. The project did not go out
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to competitive tender. That is a disgraceful contract. No such contracts are entered into by this Government. We are an accountable government; we are transparent in what we do. We get the advice of the experts. They come in and support us. We are open to scrutiny on any matter. The Auditor-General will look at this issue in due course. He will give it his seal of approval, just as he gave the State Bank sale his seal of approval only in the last few days.

The M2 tollway will not prevent the development of public transport in this region; in fact, its dedicated busway will enhance public transport and allow for the future development of light rail along the corridor. As the demand arises, other public transport projects will go ahead, such as the Parramatta-Hornsby link, and any works extending north to Hornsby will also be covered. The Parliament should treat the motion by the Opposition with the contempt that it deserves: it should be thrown out. If members of the Opposition have any brains, they will abandon it pretty quickly and not cause the House to sit late into the night going through this farce. It does not warrant the time that this Parliament is giving to it and it is a waste of taxpayers' money, requiring the staff of the Parliament to deal with the business of this motion when they ought to be dealing with matters of substance - that is, the Government's program, which is for the benefit of the people of this State. We should not waste any further time on this motion; it should be overwhelmingly rejected.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I warn members that they retain the calls to order imposed at the time debate was interrupted for private members' statements.

Mr J. J. AQUILINA (Riverstone) [7.38]: One of the more intelligible interjections from members of the Government during the recent contribution by the Premier was the interjection about wasting time. That is precisely what the Premier was doing; he was wasting time. Approximately 2½ of the 20 minutes he spent addressing this Chamber was directed to the question of the M2 tollway. Indeed, as the honourable member for Kogarah said, the Premier cannot answer the issue raised by the Leader of the Opposition in moving this motion, which quite clearly and quite rightfully says that this Minister does not any longer deserve to have the confidence of this House.

It was rather embarrassing to hear the Premier wafting through his contribution, padding it as he did in an attempt to fill up his 20 minutes so as to somehow appear supportive of the Minister for Transport. The Premier clearly had nothing to say about this Minister which was in any way relevant or directed towards improving his stocks so far as the Parliament is concerned. That is not surprising given the open animosity that has existed between the individuals ever since the Premier assumed that office. Why would the Premier want to save this bloke? After all, the rivalry that exists between them is so obvious. Indeed, in a 20-minute speech the Premier spent 2½ minutes trying to defend his own Minister for Transport, and Minister for Roads, and he was probably only reluctantly doing so to offset the embarrassment to his Government when this Minister loses the confidence of this House.

The House has reason to condemn this Minister and to express its lack of confidence in him. One of the issues the Premier raised at the conclusion of his contribution was the conflict the M2 will cause in the provision of public transport with regard to the condition in the contract that, should public transport be upgraded, the State will need to compensate those constructing the M2 because it will be taking business away from the M2. The Premier tried to say there was no conflict; but the prospectus clearly states on page 62:

The Minister must consult with the Company and the Trustee in good faith in respect of any proposed development -

and I take it that includes public transport development -

or granting of a concession in respect of any public transport infrastructure (including public or private passenger or freight train services) servicing the specified regions of northwestern Sydney which could reasonably be expected to have a Material Adverse Effect on the Project.

If for some reason the Government goes ahead and constructs a duplication of the railway line between Blacktown and Riverstone - something which I know is very dear to you, Mr Speaker, because of what it means in respect of the provision of public transport for people in the north-west sector and in the electorate of Hawkesbury - it could well be that the taxpayers of New South Wales will have to fork out millions of dollars in compensation.

Mr Baird: That is absolute rubbish.

Mr J. J. AQUILINA: The Minister knows it is a fact because the M2 will not finish at Old Windsor Road, as is the current situation; it will continue past Quakers Hill direct to the Phillip Parkway. Unfortunately, the Minister for Transport, and Minister for Roads has locked us into a contract which will now be used as a precedent in the future whenever the Government negotiates to construct parts of the tollway. Quite frankly, it is an absolute disgrace. This Minister has already revealed himself as an environmental vandal by what he has done in relation to the M2, and I will make some comments in relation to that in a few minutes.

The Minister has shown by this contract that he is also an economic ignoramus because he has bound the people of New South Wales to a contract for 45 years. Our sons and daughters for two generations are going to have to pay for the M2, and the taxpayers of New South Wales are going to have to dig into their pockets to provide funds for compensation for 45 years for the construction of the M2.

Mr Baird: Tell us about the harbour tunnel.

Mr J. J. AQUILINA: He cries, "Tell us about the harbour tunnel". I can tell you, Mr Minister, that you are known as the Minister with schemes that remain dreams. I just wish that this was one of those schemes that had remained a dream.

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Mr Baird: You are criticising us. We signed the contract. What are you talking about?

Mr J. J. AQUILINA: And the Premier was the one who opened it. He did not wriggle away from it, either. He delivered a mealy-mouthed speech, but he did not run away from the limelight of opening it. The detail of this contract on the M2 has now been revealed. No wonder the Government was so secretive about the entire proposal. Perhaps I will take the Minister step by step through the whole process of just how this contract came about. When one looks back on it now, one can see quite clearly what the Government had to hide. It had a lot to hide, because the details were never revealed.

I would like to take the Minister back to 14 November last year, just over 12 months ago, to an article in the Sunday Telegraph. The headline stated: "RTA Probed on tollway tender". What was the issue then? I will tell the Minister what the issue was, in case his mind needs refreshing. The issue was that the Independent Commission Against Corruption was considering two allegations of malpractice against the Roads and Traffic Authority over its handling of the proposed M2 tollway. The Minister for Transport is leaving the Chamber. It is a pity he does not stay, because it is about time he learned from the people of New South Wales precisely what the issues are in relation to this matter and about how he has treated the taxpayers of New South Wales with contempt - in the same way as he has just treated this Parliament with contempt by walking out of the Chamber.

In November 1993 the opponents of the highway accused the Roads and Traffic Authority of misleading private companies by asking them to compete for the contract to build a road, without supplying up-to-date traffic figures. Even a year ago the issue was about conflicting figures and incorrect material being made available to the public, and the real facts not being made public. On 12 February this year my colleague the honourable member for Kogarah quite rightfully urged the release of more details, more documents, so that the Parliament of this State could make an accurate and assessed judgment. On 12 February, under the heading, "ALP urges inquiry into M2 funding" an article in the Sydney Morning Herald stated:

Mr Langton said: "In last year's (1993) Estimates Committee hearings, Mr Baird refused to answer any questions on what level of public contribution would be sought for the M2 project.

It is not news that the Minister refused to make the figures public; it goes back a long way. Whenever the Opposition raised the issue about the financial dealings the Government was entering into, it was always clouded under the comment that the figures were too delicate to release because of their commercial viability and commercial confidentiality.

The only reason the Government would not make the information public was that it knew it intended to rort the system and dud the taxpayers of this State - not for one year or five years, but for 45 years. It is an absolute disgrace! What happened then? On 9 March the honourable member for Kogarah moved that a select committee be formed. One would have thought that a select committee of members of Parliament from both sides of this House would have been competent to investigate this issue. The honourable member for Kogarah moved that a select committee be appointed to inquire into and report on the conduct and activities of the Roads and Traffic Authority and the Department of Planning in relation to the planning, proposal and determination of the M2 Castlereagh Tollway, with regard to certain matters.

The terms of reference in the motion for the establishment of the select committee provided for an investigation of the costs and benefits of the project, the planning forecasts used to justify the project, the impact upon government finances of a subsidy to private investors in the M2, and a host of other matters. The crucial matters so far as this debate is concerned were the economic factors. If the Government had nothing to hide, it would have welcomed a select committee of the Parliament comprising members from both sides of the House to scrutinise, as should be the right of all members, the details of the contractual arrangements in relation to the M2. But the Government opposed the motion. Not only that, the Government managed to convince the Independents to oppose the motion. The motion was defeated, and I know only too well that to this day the Independents rue the fact that they were dudded by the Government so far as this matter is concerned. By voting against the motion for the appointment of a select committee, members of Parliament lost their only opportunity to scrutinise the contractual arrangements of the Government.

I took part in the debate on 9 March. I felt strongly about this matter, and I still do, because of the impact it will have on my electorate and on your electorate, Mr Speaker. On that occasion I said that the whole issue of the M2 needed to be looked at in terms of where the traffic will end up and who will bear the brunt of the cost. Indirectly the brunt of the cost will be borne by the taxpayers of New South Wales for the next 45 years but, specifically, it will be borne by the taxpayers living in my electorate of Riverstone and the electorate of the honourable member for The Hills, who is sitting in the Chamber glum-faced and remaining quiet on this issue. He knows only too well the impact that the M2 will have on his electorate, as well as a host of other electorates represented by Government members. On 9 March I said:

The interests of the people who live in the electorates of Riverstone and Hawkesbury will be most grossly affected by the imposition of the M2.

The people of those electorates will not receive any substantial benefits from the construction of the M2. Their lives will be jeopardised because vehicles will come along a superbly constructed road and end up in limbo. They will end up in nowhere land.

That is still precisely the case. Earlier I said that the Minister had already revealed himself to be an environmental vandal. They are not only my words,
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they are the words of anyone involved in the environment movement in this State. The environment movement is outraged by the secretive nature under which this contract has been entered into, by the total disregard for environmental concerns that the contract reveals and by future financial implications. I should like to quote from statements appearing in the Northern Herald on 17 February this year as part of the debate that was taking place at that time in the media, which was being ably led by the honourable member for Kogarah. The Director of the Total Environment Centre, Mr Jeff Angel, said that any inquiry should be expanded to cover wider transport alternatives for the area. He was signalling that any inquiry into the M2 should also look at the surrounding district because of the impact of the M2 on local neighbourhoods and residents, and because of the need for further roads.

The president of the Coalition of Transport Action Groups, Ms Jennifer Lewis, said that all activity on the M2 should stop until the outcome of an urgent, full and open inquiry was known. The dogs were barking. Everyone was saying, "Let's go a little slower, let's have a full and open inquiry, let's look into the environmental and economic details of this project". The Government refused. It continued to shroud this matter in secrecy, and it refused to open the contractual documents to the scrutiny of this Parliament. It continued on its messy way to dud the taxpayers of New South Wales and carry through this process in the most despicable manner possible, that is, by negating totally the authority of this Parliament over what was being done.

I hope that the Independents remember the debate that took place in this Chamber on 9 March in relation to the formation of the select committee and realise that a golden opportunity was lost to prevent the nonsensical types of contractual arrangements that have now been entered into. I sincerely hope the horse has not bolted, and that as a result of the successful carriage of this motion the Auditor-General will be able to have another look at this matter, report back to the Parliament by next Tuesday, and give the aye or nay in relation to the financial arrangements and the morality of the Government entering into contractual arrangements that will last for 45 years. That period of time constitutes the terms of office of 12 parliaments of New South Wales. It is absolutely horrendous.

In the time that I have remaining to speak, I want to challenge the Minister in relation to the issues involving roads. I am concerned about the aspect of this contract that provides that if the New South Wales Government were to build a road that is regarded as in some way competing with the M2 tollway, the issue of compensation comes very much to the fore. The taxpayers of New South Wales may be required to fork out compensation to the builders of the M2 because the competing road would be regarded as depriving the operators of the M2 of business from their roadway. In the north-western sector, the fastest growing part of the State, much of which is in my electorate and the electorates of Mr Speaker and the honourable member for The Hills, many roads need upgrading, for example, the Great Northern Road and Old Windsor Road. Epping Road, which passes through the electorate of the honourable member for Eastwood, needs to be substantially upgraded. The construction costs of all the other roads that will be necessary because of traffic being generated by the M2 will fall upon the shoulders of local councils.

These are all worthy considerations and matters of grave concern. My concern, and the concern of all New South Wales taxpayers, is that if a future government dares to build an alternative roadway to the M2 to divert some of the traffic, that government will have to worry about compensating the operators of the M2 because business will be taken away from them. What a fine state New South Wales has reached when the provision of an essential service such as a road is regarded as a major business! If a competing roadway is built, compensation must be paid. In closing I must refer to public transport. The great concern of the Opposition is that because of the compensation issues that will arise, the contractual arrangement in relation to the M2 will prevent the State providing public transport that will somehow rival the M2.

I am concerned about the third-rate electric train service going through my electorate and into the electorate of the honourable member for Hawkesbury. People are experiencing third world rail services with services more frequently breaking down than operating. However, with the construction of the M2 tollway if we dare to upgrade or improve that service and provide for the duplication of the railway line, we will have to fork out money for compensation to the operators of the M2 tollway. It is an absolute disgrace and it should not be allowed to happen. The Minister does not deserve the confidence of the House. He should be soundly condemned for what he has done to the State and the secretive way he has negotiated these contractual arrangements. He has dudded the people of New South Wales, who have to find compensation for as much as 45 years.

Mr ARMSTRONG (Lachlan - Deputy Premier, Minister for Public Works, and Minister for Ports) [7.58]: After listening to the honourable member for Riverstone speaking for the Opposition, one realises how long 20 minutes is. If ever there was an example of utter hypocrisy it would have to come from the Opposition, and particularly the honourable member for Riverstone. He spoke about third world rail services in his electorate but he did not tell the House, for the benefit of Hansard, about the third world rail system that the Government inherited in 1988 following 12 years of Labor Government. He did not tell the House that the consultants Booz Allen and Hamilton had indicated that the signalling equipment used for the New South Wales rail system was third world and at that stage was only in use in Egypt and China.

The honourable member for Riverstone did not mention the kerosene lights on signals down on the southern line where in 1988 at night someone had to shinny up the pole and put kerosene in the lamp to
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make the signals work. Yet he has the gall to come into the House tonight and talk about third world railways. He obviously has no respect for the truth, no comprehension of the progress that has been made, nor does he acknowledge the run-down condition of the railway and transport systems that the Government inherited 6½ years ago. As a matter of fact, I shall outline how the Opposition handled contractual matters of management. Opposition members have criticised the Government and Ministers on their financial management and I wish to make a few pertinent points in that regard.

In the 12 years of Labor administration the total loans of the then Department of Main Roads - the Roads and Traffic Authority as we now know it - increased from $160 million in 1976 to $1,078 million. That represents an increase of 573 per cent. Labor's philosophy is: do it, but do not pay for it; leave it as a debt for the people. It is not paid but left on the account. The Opposition cannot pay the accounts on its own buildings, and the bank is going to call them in. Yet Opposition members have the gall and the temerity to tell the House that they have the economic answers on how to manage the transport system in New South Wales.

Honourable members opposite did not mention the tunnel or the fish markets. In that regard they left the debt for someone else, the taxpayers of New South Wales. The former Labor Government ran this State into the highest debt State in the country. The Government has reversed that totally, with the cooperation of the good citizens of New South Wales and I am proud - as I am sure the citizens of this State are - of the extraordinary recovery that has occurred in business, commerce, transport, and investment, and in reducing the debt from $1.3 billion to under $400 million this year. That is an achievement by any standards.

This motion is frivolous, irresponsible, and is aimed to potentially damage a Minister, a ministry, and staff in the department, who have done an excellent job in bringing about a realistic transport system for this State. Our road and transport systems in New South Wales were a major factor in Sydney's bid when we bid against the world's best for the year 2000 Olympics. We took on the world and we won because we were able to demonstrate that the infrastructure in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, was better. We had changed from the days of the red rattlers in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

Under the former Labor administration the New South Wales State rail system was losing $3 million a day. The Government cut that down to half - though it is still too big a loss. The world has said that the Liberal Party-National Party Government has succeeded in developing infrastructure that will be the best in the world. That is not a bad recommendation by any benchmark. The Labor Party has always been known for its duplicity. It is astounding that it can so obviously abuse the procedures of this House with such a transparent motion designed to do nothing more than catch the evening news. The Leader of the Opposition, that Machiavellian character, wafts in and out of here like some shadow. Half of his own members talk behind his back repeatedly; they literally verbally assassinate him in the lifts, in the corridors, wherever they go.

Mr Harrison: Name them.

Mr ARMSTRONG: I will start with you, Bob. You are certainly one of them.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I call the honourable member for Kiama to order for the second time.

Mr ARMSTRONG: The Leader of the Opposition does not possess the confidence of his own people. Yesterday during the special sitting of the Parliament to discuss the State Bank bill he certainly had the opportunity to demonstrate whether he had any interest in economic matters or any contribution to make on the economic management of New South Wales. Where was the Leader of the Opposition? He was not here. Who did he put up? He pulled out the honourable member for Drummoyne, the shadow spokesman he had recently dropped to the bottom end of a pile, and what a low pile that was. The Opposition's stunts in this Parliament to try to belittle a successful Minister and a successful department can be given no credibility.

The Government has salvaged the remnants of Labor's road building program, as inadequate as it was. The former Labor administration was hatching plans to construct and widen the M4 motorway because it knew, as the Government well knew when it came to office, that there was not enough money in the kitty to maintain existing roads, let alone build new ones. Honourable members might recall, as I am sure members of the public do, those wonderful monuments to Labor with its building plans down at Darling Harbour. Remember the expressway that went nowhere, yet Labor has the temerity and gall to try to argue on a point of logic, common sense and practicality that it can do better. All it could do was build a few roads that went nowhere, and then not pay for them. It left the bill for the public to pick up. It broke the State.

I wish to refer to the transport methods of those who have spoken to this motion. The shadow transport spokesman catches the train to work from his seat of Kogarah in Sydney's south, a seat he probably will not be holding much longer because the Liberal candidate has identified what a weak local member he has been. Kogarah is serviced by an excellent railway system, and the honourable member for Kogarah has obviously found that it is preferable to travel to work by train and easier to get home by train after a few libations, as happens from time to time. The Leader of the Opposition cannot even drive, yet he talks about economics. He wants to become an expert on roads and he is still learning to drive. I should add that he should put his "L" plates up for politics as well as driving a car. He is lucky enough to have a driver, paid for by the State, to bring him in to work. Maroubra - the electorate of the Leader of the Opposition - has one of the best bus
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services in Sydney and an excellent road system, thanks to his Labor mate and former neighbouring member, Laurie Brereton, who poured hundreds of millions of dollars into improving roads in the area.

The two city non-aligned Independent members have access to a diverse range of forms of public transport, such as rail, bus and ferry. Therefore, it is appropriate for them to consider how they travel around Sydney and how they arrived at Parliament House today before they give this motion any further consideration. Did the honourable member for Manly, who is busy, as other people are, drive into the city today, or did he exercise the more environmentally and socially aware choice of catching a bus or ferry into the city? I would hedge my bets and suggest that he drove to Parliament and parked his car downstairs so that he could be in the comfort and privacy of his car as he knew we would finish late tonight. Even though his public transport options are good, it is more convenient for him to drive.

This Government is making public transport more convenient. However, as good as it is, it will not suit all people at all times. More people are riding by bus to work from the north shore than in the past, because if they drive to work and look across the approaches to the harbour bridge they see bus commuters flying past in the bus lane. They realise it is far more efficient and convenient to catch the bus. However, no matter how attractive public transport is made, it will not suit all people at all times. It ill behoves the Opposition to argue against the M2 contract. Members opposite refer to leaving a 45-year non-competitive clause within the contract, but they do not understand investment or how to be constructive. Members opposite do not understand the contractual process, the demographics of population increase, and the changing demands of society over the next 50 years. Above all, they have no vision of planning for tomorrow, and that is why Labor governments have always been in trouble in this country, particularly in New South Wales. They have no capacity to think beyond next week's pay cheque; they have always been dependent on receiving that pay cheque every fortnight as none of them has been in business and earned a bob.

Members opposite do not understand contracts; the movement and management of money; forward business planning; how to take into account the wishes of the people of New South Wales and business; or how the character of this wonderful city will develop over the next 50 to 100 years. The Government does not have to demonstrate that it has vision for the future because the members of the Olympic movement said last year that we had that vision. They gave us the credit that in the year 2000 - in six years' time - ours will be the most desirable city in the world as all aspects of infrastructure will be available to support the most brilliant and famous games in the history of the Olympic movement; namely, the 2000, turn-of-the-millennium games. The Government can rest on its laurels; it can say: We don't have to produce the references because the world has done it for us through the Olympic movement.

The private sector needs to know that it is making a secure investment, as does the State. The Labor Party does not understand the notion of secure investment as it built Darling Harbour with a 248 per cent cost blow-out; it left a $37 million-odd debt at the fish markets; and it left a billion dollar debt with the Roads and Traffic Authority under the former Department of Main Roads. The Labor Party does not understand these matters. If private enterprise is not confident of making a profit, it will not invest in the facility and the people of the north-west of the city will not receive a motorway to reduce travelling time by up to 1½ hours. Government cannot afford this type of investment any more. The contract does not rule out improvements to the railway system. Significantly, the motorway will be a major part of the improvement to the public transport system with the construction of two bus lanes on the route. The environment will be a major winner.

The construction of the M2 motorway will lead to the removal of through traffic from local streets, and 21 sets of traffic lights will be bypassed. Members opposite may not like the truth - they probably do not understand it. Regarding the openness of the contract, it is the first major public listing of an infrastructure project in Australia. This is one of the few publicly-listed road projects in the world. The Opposition may not want the progress and development that the people desire. It may not want to see this city prosper in the future. It may not want environmental improvements, and the standard of life improved, but, by crikey, the Government does!

The Government intends to continue with the reforms introduced during the last six years. The reforms made in the transport portfolio in the State Rail Authority, State Transit Authority and the Department of Transport have saved the people of New South Wales over $1.53 billion, or $766 per New South Wales household since this Government came to office. More than $4.6 billion, including the 1994-95 allocation, has been invested in revitalising the State's public transport system. Capital expenditure on public transport is at record levels, and has increased by 71 per cent since 1988, when the fellows opposite left government and we came to office.

The total operating cost of the agencies within the transport portfolio has fallen 19 per cent in real terms, from $2.66 billion in 1987-88 to $2.16 billion in 1993-94. These savings have been passed on to the New South Wales taxpayers and the customers of transport services in the State. Since 1987-88, Freight Rail's wheat rates have been reduced by 10 per cent and coal rates by 25 per cent. Never in the history of Labor governments in this State has a reduction occurred in the rail cartage rate of coal and wheat. Nevertheless, Labor has the temerity to claim in this debate that it knows more about managing transport than Minister Baird and his department. What an insult! Why did members opposite, when in government, not reduce the cost of the cartage of wheat and coal? Why did they not have a go if they are so good? They do not know how as they have never done it!

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The State Rail Authority staff numbers have reduced by 15,447 since 1 July 1988; that is, from 36,717 employees in 1987-88 to 22,270 at June 1994. Productivity improvements in the SRA have been substantial since 1987-88: Freight Rail productivity is up by 124 per cent, CityRail by 43 per cent and CountryLink by 26 per cent. For every CityRail staff member in 1993-94, 23,800 passengers were carried. This compares with only 16,619 passengers in 1988. Those are only some of the indicators of how the policies of this Minister and this Government are working in the interests of the people of New South Wales. These policies also benefit primary industry, such as the coal and wheat industries, and secondary industry in manufacturing. The transport system covers a variety of means of transport from bus and coach to airline, rail and private transport. For instance, in my electorate of Lachlan, a conservative seat in the centre of New South Wales, some 3,475 -

Mr Langton: On a point of order: the motion specifically relates to the M2 contract relating to the north-west transit link. It does not relate to country trains, and certainly not to the electorate represented by the Deputy Premier. It is a specific motion.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Unfortunately, as the member for Kogarah has no doubt noted, various speakers have sought to widen the debate beyond reference to the M2 motorway contract. Accordingly, the Deputy Premier is in order. However, I ask the Deputy Premier, and those who will contribute to the debate, not to stray too far from the leave of the motion.

Mr ARMSTRONG: I was endeavouring to broaden the knowledge of the Parliament regarding the efficiency and effectiveness of the policies of the Minister and his department in recent years. I was indicating that rural New South Wales has a massive number of public transport seats available every day of every week. The total in my electorate every week is 11,471 seats that are filled on inward journeys, and 11,531 seats on outward journeys, representing a total of 22,900 seats a week for a population of 70,000 people. That is not too bad for a country area, is it?

The choices now available were not there under Labor. The 1940s and 1950s rolling stock on those services was not patronised because it was unsafe and uncomfortable. Freight Rail was so inefficient that no-one would use it. It ran out of customers and it took this Government months to overcome the dreadful public relations image that the State Rail Authority had when we came to office in 1988. Bruce Baird is doing an outstanding and sterling job. It is a disgrace that the Opposition has singled him out for a mickey mouse, very penny-ante exercise to try to score a couple of cheap headlines for a leader of a party who does not have the confidence of his members and who is treated behind his back as a joke by his frontbenchers and backbenchers.

Mr MOSS (Canterbury) [8.18]: Only yesterday in this Chamber we sold the State Bank for a pittance. Yesterday we handed the State Bank over to the private sector at a give-away price. That should have been bad enough for one week under this Government but today's special allows for the private sector to build a road at no risk whatsoever to the company constructing the road or its investors. The contract specifies that the State Government will accept almost all liability for any changes which may affect the road in the next 45 years. This is a disgraceful situation. The Minister for Transport, and Minister for Roads has locked future governments for the next 45 years - as the honourable member for Riverstone has pointed out, the next two generations - into a road contract that is weighted very heavily against the taxpayers of this State.

The contract will also virtually prevent the installation of any substantial public transport systems for the north-west by future governments for the next 45 to 50 years. The finer points of the contract that the Minister agreed to prevent the upgrading of existing roads or the building of new roads adjacent to the motorway. That is why the House is considering a no confidence motion in regard to the Minister. The motion suggests ways in which the situation can be retrieved. It calls on the Auditor-General to inquire into the matter and to see how legally binding the contract is. It is a shame that the first part of the motion has to express no confidence in the Minister. If the Minister had been more honest in answering questions in the House yesterday the Opposition may have been a little more lenient towards him. In reply to a question from the Leader of the Opposition whether the M2 tollway banned the Government from providing public transport to the north-west sector for the next 50 years all the Minister for Transport could tell us was that the M2 would provide a couple of bus lanes.

He knows full well that the Opposition wanted to know how the road will affect the wider area of the west for the next 45 years. If the Minister for Transport thinks that one bus lane will service the public transport needs of the north-west for the next 45 years he has a lot to learn. The contract mentions that the population in the area will grow to an astronomical level within just a few years. The Minister was also asked whether the contract precluded the Government from upgrading Epping Road or other roads to specified regions in the north-west for the next 50 years. All he could say was that there was nothing in the way the project was structured or financed that prevented alternative action from being taken. I suppose that is the case but the contract locks future governments in and any changes would be at tremendous cost.

The Minister admitted in his speech today that if the contract is breached in any way the government of the day will run the risk of having the toll increased or the contract period extended. He virtually threatened that we had to behave ourselves in relation to the contract that he drafted which is weighted heavily in favour of developers and future owners of the road. He was also asked whether the contract for the M2 tollway provided for the Roads and Traffic Authority to reimburse the company involved for council or water rates above a specified level. After
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a lot of waffle he eventually answered the question by saying, "The contract follows the normal commercial approach and we do not apologise for it". That is utter nonsense. There is no normal commercial approach; in fact there is no commercial approach whatsoever to roads contractors with respect to the provision for council rates or water rates.

The Minister knows that the issue of rating surfaced only very recently when a number of councils through which the M5 travels were successful in achieving a measure of rates for a certain period simply because the M5, although it is an RTA corridor, is a private road running through a number of local government areas. The company building the road, the Hills Motorway Limited, and the Hills Motorway Trust, are aware of the recent decision. They are worried that they might be up for local government or water rates in the future. They have seen to it that the Government will pay the rates. It is not normal commercial practice; it is a new commercial approach. It is the approach that has been enunciated by the Minister for Transport. The Government has virtually handed over responsibility for any future rates imposed on the land to future governments, not to the persons who have leased the land for 45 years.

It does not matter what sort of property you lease, you pay your water rates and your land rates. If a landlord does not bill you directly he charges you for those rates through your rent. But the owners of this road will get off scot-free. The Minister has argued that there will be provision for public transport in the north-west in the future in addition to this road. He has hung his hat on the contract allowing for one public transport artery along the road, as I mentioned before - a bus lane. Page 14 of the prospectus contains a diagram of the bus lane. The bus way will run along only a portion of the road. The tollway will run from Windsor Road to Epping Road. The bus lane is from Beecroft Road to Epping Road, so it will not even travel the full length of the road. The Government knows why the Opposition is concerned about future public transport links in the area, because we know that while it may be possible to provide additional public transport in future it can be done only at substantial cost to the taxpayers of the State. The prospectus also points out on page 12:

An important element in the development of the M2 Motorway corridor is the residential growth in Rouse Hill . . . to date land has been rezoned for 20,000 homesites out of a total of about 70,000 potential lots.

The Government's answer to the future public transport needs of that area is a lousy bus lane along a portion of the M2. The Government is locking us into that; it will cost a small fortune to do otherwise. How dare this Government lock future governments into that for the next 45 years! When the Minister spoke on this motion he largely avoided that, because of his embarrassment about this prospectus. He tried to convince the House of all the wonderful things he has done in public transport over the past seven years. He spoke at length about increased rail services in metropolitan Sydney and throughout the State. In my electorate there are four railway stations, and at each of them the toilets are closed, there is no disabled access, there has been no platform realignment to cater for the newer trains, and trains do not run to them after midnight. So much for increased public transport in metropolitan Sydney.

Buses are no better. I have seen one bus service abolished entirely, a number of others reduced substantially over the last 7½ years, and a bus depot in my electorate closed in 1991. The Government talks about increased public transport services. That is not the case in the Canterbury electorate. The Government talks about all the savings that have been achieved in public transport. The Canterbury region is contributing towards those savings in no small way. The Minister said the Government would extend the M5 through a tunnel under Wolli Creek. I am glad he mentioned that and I hope that message gets across to the Liberal candidate who is running against me at the next election, because he is at variance with Government policy.

He said that as far as he is concerned the road should not be built and he is opposed to it. My Liberal opponent is also supporting the retention of Canterbury Hospital. I am glad I have been endorsed as the Labor candidate in this seat; otherwise he might be asked to take my place. He is sprouting Labor policy all over the place. The Minister has made it clear that the Government wants to run the road through a tunnel under Wolli Creek, and I hope he tells that to my counterpart, who is obviously breaching Liberal Party policy. One area where a deal has been stitched up between the Government and the company building the M2 tollway is the toll charge. The toll is fixed at $2.50 until the year 2000. After that it will be increased by 4 per cent per annum. Of course, if the consumer price index increases by more than 4 per cent the toll can also be increased by more than that percentage.

However, if the CPI does not rise within any given year, there is nothing to stop the operator - from the year 2000 - increasing the toll up by 4 per cent a year. The shareholders in this company are guaranteed increased profits every year, even if the CPI does not increase. In fact, the prospectus points that out. In periods of low inflation the toll agreement, as drawn up, is tantamount to the Government issuing a blank cheque to the company that is building the motorway. The road also provides for a combined breakdown and bicycle lane. The prospectus again, very boldly, says that this breakdown and bicycle lane will be constructed with the same pavement structure as the road itself in order to provide flexibility with future traffic movements.

In other words, in years to come when public transport is lacking in the north-west as a result of this proposed contract, the only area where one will be able to expand motor transport will be along the M2. The road will be constructed with a cycleway and a breakdown lane in such a manner that they can be used as an extra lane for vehicles. The road is being constructed to provide flexibility for future traffic
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movements. In other words, eventually it will not be a four-lane motorway, it will be a six-lane motorway. That is a sweetheart deal stitched up by this Government. Under the heading "Material Changes affecting the Project", the prospectus says:

The parties agree that the following matters are capable of materially adversely affecting the Project.

Section 5 states:

If the New South Wales Government deals with transport in specified regions of north western Sydney in a way which discriminates against the Company in the running of the M2 Motorway or which prejudices the M2 Motorway's operational results . . .

The fine print in this prospectus appears to state that any upgrading of any road or any increase in public transport services, even a bus service, could be construed as having an effect on the M2 road. If that is the case the taxpayers will be liable for compensation. Finally, one of the most despicable statements in the prospectus points out:

The Minister must have regard to the effect on the M2 Motorway (and its traffic usage), and the fact that the M2 Motorway is the principal passenger and freight arterial route servicing the North West region of Sydney.

How dare the Minister lock future governments into agreeing that the principal mode of passenger and freight transport in the greater north-western area of Sydney, for the next 45 years, should be a private road - thus stifling future governments from providing adequate public transport systems in the area. For that reason the Minister for Transport, and Minister for Roads should be condemned and a vote of no confidence in him should be carried.

Mr TINK (Eastwood) [8.38]: The contribution by the honourable member for Canterbury started with a proposition that there was no risk to private sector investment. It is plain that the private sector assumes the major risk of the project, including traffic risk, design risk and construction risk. That is made clear from the risks set out in the draft prospectus. The accuracy and relevance of the speech of the honourable member for Canterbury went downhill from there. There is no need for me to traverse any further the issues he raised. The first part of the motion is extremely serious. Honourable members who have spoken in this debate from the Government side made it abundantly clear that the Minister is an outstanding Minister, one of the great public transport and road Ministers in the history of New South Wales.

There is no need for me to traverse the issues that relate to the no confidence motion. Suffice it to say that the matters raised by the Opposition in that regard are a complete and utter joke and should be treated with contempt. Privately, I have some time for the honourable member for Canterbury, and I acknowledge that he intimated in his speech that he was a little embarrassed about that part of the motion. Well he might be. It would be nice if some other members opposite had the decency to admit that that part of the motion, dealing with the Minister's record, is an embarrassment.

In wondering what is behind this motion, one does not have to go much further than yesterday's question time. The honourable member for Kogarah is the Opposition spokesperson for transport, and yesterday his first question related to the widening of Epping Road. His great concern with respect to this draft prospectus was that, according to him, the tollway documents might preclude the upgrading of Epping Road for 50 years. The honourable member has been obsessed with the widening of Epping Road for as long as I can recall. In fact, in the past he has called the M2 a "yuppie way". He was strongly supportive of Commissioner Woodward's proposals to upgrade Epping Road a few years ago, and the first question he asked yesterday highlighted his fixation and obsession in this regard. He wishes to ensure that there is no impediment in any contract to the widening of Epping Road. He wants to see Epping Road and Carlingford Road widened as a substitute for this proposed road.

That would be a disaster for the people in the electorates of Eastwood and Gladesville; ever-increasing volumes of through traffic would use the roads in those electorates. If honourable members think I am exaggerating, they have only to refer to the original submission of the National Roads and Motorists Association. In a document entitled "F2 Castlereagh Freeway: NRMA Submission to the Commission of Inquiry: October 1989", one can see - by way of a number of diagrams - the dramatic effect and the disastrous impact the road widening proposals of the honourable member for Kogarah would have for the Eastwood, Ryde and Gladesville areas. He is still championing that proposal, as was highlighted in his speech today. I am sure that come the election next March a lot of people will hold him accountable for that position.

As the Minister for Transport, and Minister for Roads said, the honourable member for Kogarah had to make a grovelling apology to people involved in the private consortium to build this road. He misrepresented a number of matters relating to an alleged conflict of interest, and, rather than cop a writ, he had to pull his head in quick smart and withdraw his remarks. The contribution of the honourable member for Kogarah today, and his contribution during question time yesterday, are of the same flavour. His agenda to widen roads that were never meant to be widened and to flood the area with through traffic is alive and well.

I turn to the motion and to the allegations of gross maladministration, which centre around the M2 north-west transport link contract. The motion highlights four points: the planning, investigating, determining and awarding of the M2 north-west transport link; and it calls for the involvement of the Auditor-General. Let us look at each of these allegations in turn. The planning reality is that in large part the M2 corridor has been there for 40 years. This is not a flash-in-the-pan planning effort; the corridor has been in existence for 40 years.

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Detailed investigations have been going on for at least the past six years with respect to the plan for a current, contemporary proposal to deal with transport issues in the north-west. As honourable members would be aware, a commission of inquiry looked into the issue. A proposal was made to alternatively widen Epping Road and Carlingford Road. People were not consulted. It has been accepted by most, with the exception of the honourable member for Kogarah, that the option of widening Epping Road and Carlingford Road is not acceptable on the basis of social justice and traffic management. Commissioner Woodward said that it was important to create extra traffic capacity, and said that the M2 corridor should be retained for another 10 years to see what the impact of that road widening would be.

Those proposals were comprehensively rejected by the community at large. As the Minister said today, we have had the most extraordinary demonstrations and scenes throughout the north-west in support of the M2 tollway. I have a petition in my hand, containing literally thousands of signatures, that seeks support for the construction of the F2. It is an indication of the support for the proposal, arising out of 40 years of planning and planning certainty. It is very important to get planning certainty in these projects. That can be seen most recently in relation to the airport debate. I refer to the incredible dislocation and disaster that occurs in people's lives when plans which have been advertised, which people have built their lives around, are suddenly put into doubt and jeopardy.

That was the outcome of the Woodward inquiry. That is why there is such strong support for using this corridor for a substantially road-based solution. That is why literally thousands of people have signed a petition and have turned up to meetings. Following comprehensive rejection of this inquiry by the community - with the community voting with its feet, and thousands of people marching down Carlingford Road to demand the building of the M2 - a further exhaustive environmental process was undertaken. That process was completely independent and involved extensive public consultation. It was never successfully challenged in the Independent Commission Against Corruption, was never successfully taken before the Ombudsman, was never a matter that in any way came to the attention of the Auditor-General and, above all, was never a matter that was taken to the Land and Environment Court.

That process provided a forum at which people could voice genuine concerns about the environmental planning process. There was nothing to take to the ICAC, the Auditor-General, the Ombudsman or the Land and Environment Court because this Minister - the Minister the Opposition seeks to censure - ensured that under his stewardship all the processes were carried out in an exemplary fashion, in a precedent-making fashion when it came to setting the scene for getting these processes up without any problems. That is why nobody took action in the Land and Environment Court or anywhere else. No action was reasonably capable of being taken. There was no case that could be put.

The next step was the environmental determination. That matter was determined according to law. It also could have been taken to the Land and Environment Court, to the ICAC, to the Ombudsman and to the Auditor-General; but it was taken to none of those bodies. I believe that the honourable member for Kogarah raised a couple of matter that I think were raised after the environmental determination had been made. The ICAC dealt with them in very short order and sent the honourable member packing. The result was his grovelling apology to the people in the private sector that he embarrassed with his public comments.

The determination was the point at which there could have been a separate challenge by any of those bodies, but there was none. That forms the basis of the draft prospectus, about which so much has been made. The Leader of the Opposition referred to page 26 of the draft and to competing transport systems. The very words that the Leader of the Opposition read summarise the outcome of the environmental impact determination. They reflect the outcome of six years of public consultation, six years of public demonstration, six years of overwhelming support for the proposal that is now in these documents, and 40 years of planning for the corridor to be set aside.

There can be no attack on the material set out concerning competing transport systems because it emerged from the public consultation process and the environmental impact determination; and it has gone unchallenged in the Land and Environment Court. Earlier in the year there was debate in this House on a motion to refer the matter to a parliamentary committee and this Chamber opposed that motion and fully and comprehensively considered all the issues up to the environmental impact determination stage. Those matters have already been considered by this Chamber and it is upon that basis, apart from anything else, that this document has been drawn up and those assumptions have been made.

The other assumptions about which so much has been made involve the base case and matters stemming from the base case. The starting point in all of this is that the private sector is assuming all of the traffic risk, which of course is the key risk in this type of contract - and the construction risk, which I suppose is the other one - in the context of that base case. That case was subject to an environmental determination; it was not challenged in any court, or by any statutory body or statutory officer; and it received the green light through this Parliament with the support of the honourable member for Manly, the honourable member for Bligh and the honourable member for South Coast. It is upon that basis that this document has been brought forward and the private sector involvement became apparent. There is no suggestion anywhere in the contract of any locking out of the public sector from further developing public transport options; none whatever.

All that is said in this context is that if those developments alter the base case there can be renegotiations. But, what of that? What are we getting out of this contract? We are getting a major
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infrastructure project for which the private sector is carrying the risk and the lion's share of the financing; we are getting an outcome where the public purse has been saved something in the vicinity of $500 million and, accordingly, that money is available for all sorts of public transport projects elsewhere in this State - including, I dare say, in the electorates of many honourable members who will support this motion.

If the motion, in whole or in part, succeeds, the private sector investment in this project will be in grave jeopardy, private sector investment in other public transport projects will be in the gravest jeopardy and the Government will have to fall back on consolidated revenue resources to get those projects under way. If that happens, the timetable for a number of public transport projects, including light and heavy rail projects, will be thrown into complete chaos. The outcome here is that the private sector is taking the lion's share of the risk and is providing the lion's share of the finance. It is an excellent outcome in that context, and is seen as an outstanding precedent in other States and overseas. If it is thrown into chaos as a result of this motion, New South Wales will lose the benefit of all that and we will not see private sector investment in these types of projects again in this State.

That is something that has to be borne in mind in respect of the eastern distributor and any of the possibilities that might come on line as a result of the section 22 deliberations in the Manly-Warringah area; and it has to be borne in mind in relation to other projects elsewhere in the city involving private sector investment or possible private sector investment. The key public transport initiatives in the north-west remain intact. The Government has announced its intention to establish the northern line, down through Epping and across to Carlingford and Parramatta - a crucially important public transport project to ease traffic congestion in the region and create better links between growth areas on the central coast and the Parramatta region and the booming western suburbs.

That is something that is not involved in the limitations arising out of this contract. The integrated transport link is an import part of this project, and that is yet another element that has been placed in jeopardy by this motion and by the private sector being put off the pace if this motion gets up. The first integrated transport link in this State will be speared if this proposal gets up, and I think that that would be an absolute tragedy and a disgrace. The fact is that busways do work, and that busways converted into light rail do work, and there are ample precedents of that in other States, particularly in Western Australia. As the local member I welcome the concept of a busway, moving to light rail, being hooked into the main northern line at Epping. I regard it as a real ground-breaking precedent.

The idea that the Minister for Transport, and Minister for Roads could be subject to a motion of no confidence for achieving such a ground-breaking project in this State is absolutely obscene. Whatever the Opposition may do, I would ask the Independents to contemplate the extraordinary degree of public interest and involvement in this process from the time the first steps were taken by the Government in 1988 to get started on the M2, and the extraordinary public support for the M2 in the north-west of Sydney. That is why all the members who represent electorates in the north-west want the M2 to proceed. It is not some little frolic that we are on about personally; it is something that a couple of hundred thousand of our constituents have been demanding, and about which they have been put off, for 40 years.

We are getting close to an outcome on this; we are within a hair's breadth of achieving an outcome that our constituents have been waiting for for 40 years. If this motion gets up, that is all back in the melting pot. The Independents supported the Government on this issue in March and this document is based on their support. A couple of hundred thousand of our constituents are going to have the legs cut out from under them if the Independents support the Opposition on this motion. It will be playing into the hands of the Opposition; it will be playing into the hands of the honourable member for Kogarah; it will be sending out a signal supporting the widening of Carlingford and Epping roads, throwing local roads throughout Gladesville, Ryde and Eastwood into chaos and completely ruining the development of the north-west sector in any way that involves an integrated transport link. It would be an absolute tragedy to go back to square one on this and, if the Opposition blocks this project, it will pursue its other pet projects, and all of our other private-public projects, all of which will save a lot of public money, will not get off the ground.

Mr IEMMA (Hurstville) [8.58]: I start my contribution by addressing one or two of the issues mentioned by the honourable member for Eastwood. He said that if this motion is carried any chance of private sector involvement in future public infrastructure projects would be destroyed and that the confidence of the private sector would be dashed. Obviously he has not looked at the recent Auditor-General's report on private sector participation in the provision of infrastructure. The Auditor-General expressed strong concerns about the conditions contained in the contract for the M5. The prospectus for the M2 contains similar conditions. For the benefit of the honourable member for Eastwood and the Minister I should like to quote from what the Auditor-General had to say about the types of clauses that appear in the prospectus for the M2. At page 387 of his report, referring to the M5, he said:

If such maintenance and repair involves an upgrading of such roads, the RTA must have regard to the fact that the Tollroad -

that is the M5 -

is a principal arterial road of the road system of New South Wales.

The Auditor-General also expressed concern that he had not had sufficient time to examine the clause. On page 62, when dealing with maintenance of other roads, the prospectus reads:

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The RTA may maintain and repair other roads, including alternative roads. If that involves an upgrading of those roads that compete with the M2 Motorway, the RTA must have regard to the fact that the M2 Motorway is the principal arterial road servicing the specified regions of northwestern Sydney.

That is identical to the clause about which the Auditor-General expressed concern in the contract for the M5. One of the reasons for his concern was that when the time came to extend the M5, the western link, no tenders were called before the contract was awarded to Leightons. The Auditor-General believed that the appearance of the principal arterial road clause in the M5 contract in some way acted to influence the RTA to award the western link contract to Leightons. He said that those types of clauses may act against the public interest because a proper tendering process is not undertaken. He could not scrutinise the documents to protect the public interest. At the end of the day, protection of the public interest is what we are all about.

Yesterday the House debated the sale of the State Bank. The Auditor-General examined the terms of sale of the State Bank and concluded that the price was fair and reasonable. The Government hung its hat on that conclusion when seeking approval of the agreement for sale. The Auditor-General did not get a run in the contribution of any Government speaker, including the Minister. The Minister knows of the existence of the earlier report and of the Auditor-General's reservations about the conditions contained in the M5 documentation. It is now convenient for the Government to ignore the Auditor-General. If the Auditor-General produces a report that supports the Government's arguments, the report is paraded around. However, if the Auditor-General draws the attention of the public to concerns he may have about private sector involvement in the provision of public infrastructure, the Government chooses to ignore those concerns.

For that reason the second part of the motion is important. The contract for the M2 should be referred to the Auditor-General so that he can examine the deal with a fine toothcomb, something he was not able to do in relation to the M5. The Auditor-General will then be able to give the Parliament and the public the benefit of his advice, as he did in relation to the State Bank. The honourable member for Eastwood said that no future government project could be excluded from the terms of this deal, and that the deal protected the public and did not exclude the provision of future public infrastructure, public transport initiatives or other road initiatives. He must have been looking at a different document. What triggers compensation?

The development of new road links materially affecting the M2 triggers compensation. Any project or program to upgrade existing roads west of the intersection of Epping Road and the tollway that materially affects the M2 triggers compensation. Under the terms of the prospectus, any such program or project would materially affect the M2. Under the provisions set out on pages 61 and 62 of the prospectus, any project involving a public transport link, bus or rail, that materially affects the M2 triggers compensation. Practically everything is ruled out except fixing potholes. What type of future project would avoid the provisions contained in this prospectus?

The honourable member for Eastwood claimed that if these provisions were called into question, the base of the whole project would be destroyed. That is nonsense. In this extraordinary deal the Minister has basically signed away the right of the public to the development of future public transport projects in the north-west region. He has granted the operators of the M2 a free run for 45 years. If the Government envisages that sort of private sector involvement in public infrastructure, it is certainly on the wrong track. In his report on the M4 and the M5 the Auditor-General made specific reference to the involvement of the private sector in the provision of public infrastructure. We are told that payment of the toll will discharge any obligation taxpayers may have in relation to the project, and so long as there is a toll the private contractor meets all of the risk, and the public is not left to pick up the tab in any way.

The Auditor-General certainly exploded that argument when he found in relation to the M5, contrary to what has been argued, that the toll road would be financed purely from tolls. He found that the Roads and Traffic Authority, on behalf of the taxpayers of New South Wales, had to kick in $85 million to keep the project viable. The Government's view is that involving the private sector in public infrastructure means signing away the right to keep the profits and run the road, excluding any other form of road or public transport project, and making the public pay a subsidy and guarantee the losses. It is the old National Party line: capitalise the profits and socialise the losses.

The Government wants to make sure that the taxpayer picks up the tab at some stage in the project. That is what happened, to the extent of $85 million, with the M5. The M5 western extension resulted in the RTA kicking in $50 million on a project worth $65 million. That project was not tendered for because the RTA interpreted the contract it had signed for the Liverpool to Beverly Hills project in a way that meant that the contract had to be awarded to Interlink because of the existence of two conditions - and the M2 prospectus contains identical conditions - that provide that the RTA must recognise that the M5 was the principal arterial road. Because of that the RTA decided it had to award the contract to Leightons.

That is the danger of not tendering for projects such as the M5 extension and the M2. In his report the Auditor-General was alerting the public and the Parliament to that danger. The Minister should take heed of the warning he has received. This motion was moved because the Minister has gone down the same track as that he traversed in relation to the M5 proposal, totally ignoring what the Auditor-General had to say. He now finds himself in the predicament of facing a no confidence motion, which includes a reference to the Auditor-General.

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I hope the Independent members will support the motion, which will enable the Auditor-General's office to go through this deal with a fine toothcomb and finally test the issues to which he has referred in his report. He was not able to obtain the necessary documentation in sufficient time to provide a considered response to the types of conditions that appear in the prospectus and are set out in the M2 deal. The honourable member for Eastwood said that he was speaking on behalf of hundreds of thousands of people in the northern and north-western suburbs of Sydney who are overwhelmingly in favour of the project. I am sure they would not be overwhelmingly in favour of signing away their rights as taxpayers to alternative road projects or transport initiatives. Though they may agree with the actual M2 proposal, I am sure that the honourable member for Eastwood has not informed them that this deal will prevent them from having access to any form of alternative project in competition with the M2 for the next 45 years.

Mr O'Doherty: It does not.

Mr IEMMA: I challenge the honourable member for Ku-ring-gai to name one thing that the Government will be able to do the under the terms of this contract that will not trigger the issue of compensation and that will not materially affect it. Once the operator's lawyers get a hold of it, virtually anything sought to be built out there, whether public or private, will trigger the issue of compensation. Pages 61 and 62 of the prospectus confirm that fact. Honourable members opposite should read the Auditor-General's report on private involvement in public infrastructure projects. He gave warnings about these types of conditions being inserted into contracts for such projects.

Government members have not read the report because it does not suit them to read it. It suited the Government yesterday to rely on the Auditor-General when it flogged off the State Bank for a song. However, it does not suit the Government to do so on this occasion. On this issue Government members want to ignore the Auditor-General. However, the Auditor-General warned that such conditions in contracts increase the danger of the public paying significantly more than it should. And the public is carrying the can for this project. The whole purpose of private sector involvement is to save taxpayers' money.

Honourable members opposite should read the comments of the Auditor-General about the M5 proposal. That project was supposed to have been totally funded by toll revenue, yet it ended up costing taxpayers $85 million. He referred also to the Casula link, in relation to which there was no tender and the Roads and Traffic Authority had to kick in $50 million of the required $65 million, in addition to the original commitment for the Liverpool-Beverly Hills link of $30 million. The purpose of private sector involvement is to enable taxpayers' money to be spent on schools and hospitals. Yet in the end, the M5 cost $85 million. The Auditor-General issued a warning in that regard. That is why the matter should be referred to the Auditor-General and why the Minister should no longer have the confidence of this House. He is the first Minister in this Parliament to present such a shonky deal. He has signed away the rights of New South Wales taxpayers.

Mr Cochran: There is nothing shonky about it and you know it.

Mr IEMMA: It is a bit rich for members of the National Party to be talking about shonky deals; we all know about their shonky deals. This deal typifies a government that sees public transport options as the enemy, as the evil empire. The Government will enter into any deal or contract that will exclude any form of public transport options. As long as that is possible the Government will deliver for its masters, the people who have signed on the dotted line in this contract. Sydney has the makings of an excellent transport system but this deal will prevent people living in the west and the north-west having access to an alternative to the private transport system or to the private motor vehicle. The Minister has decided to sign away all rights to those alternatives. The Government claims that it believes in choice. Where is the choice in this matter? People who live in the north-west will be locked out for 45 years. Under this deal no-one in the north-west will have access to public transport. The Auditor-General issued his warnings and outlined his concerns in his report.

[Interruption]

I am glad the honourable member for Coffs Harbour is present in the Chamber. He failed to turn up for a division the other day. He was not present for the police debate but he is present for the debate on tollways. That is fantastic. The motion deserves to be carried because the Minister has sold out the people of New South Wales. Though he is the transport Minister, he has shown that he is only interested in private motor vehicle transport and tollways. The Government will sign on the dotted line for any tollway proposal regardless of the cost to the taxpayer. About $170 million of taxpayers' money will be signed away to buy land for the M2. The Government will sign on the dotted line for any private sector road or transport project. [Time expired.]

Mr MERTON (Baulkham Hills) [9.18]: This motion is based on deliberate - not unintentional, negligent or stupid - falsehood. The Carr tactic is lies, lies and lies. He is the old Goebbles of the Labor Party; he believes that if lies are told long and loud enough, someone will believe them. Yesterday the Leader of the Opposition was found out when this House dealt with the State Bank legislation; he was not prepared to participate in that debate. He had given a big build up saying that he would do certain things, but he was not prepared to front the House yesterday. He was found out telling lies. I suggest that the speech he gave today he intended to give yesterday in the debate on the sale of the State Bank but he was not prepared to face the troops. His speech was as relevant to the State Bank as it was to the motion before House today.

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The honourable member for Hurstville spoke in this debate, although his electorate is a long way from Epping, Baulkham Hills, Blacktown and Seven Hills. Members opposite talked about the M5, but this motion relates to the M2. The Opposition has moved the motion claiming gross maladministration by the Minister. However, it is relevant to note what happened when the harbour tunnel contract was let by the Australian Labor Party in the dying days of that corrupt and maladministered regime. On that occasion there was no debate as the gag was applied, no tenders were called, no inquiry was held and no real discussion took place. The proposal went straight ahead - contrary to what has happened with the M2 motorway proposal. The honourable member for Kogarah is back in the Chamber again. We saw him in action today, but he will take this matter no further than he did on a previous occasion in a pathetic attempt to stop a road being provided to the people of north-west Sydney. He failed dismally then, and he will fail dismally today.

Members opposite are living in the days of mates. They are a part of the great Labor history exemplified by the great Mr Richardson, who recently wrote such a marvellous book! They are living in the days of the red rattlers; they are living in the hey day and glory of great Labor leaders. Lang and Chifley would turn in their graves if they realised the weak and pathetic people who have inherited the once great mantle of the Labor Party! Members opposite are living in the days when railways were costing the taxpayers of New South Wales approximately $3 million a day in losses. Once more the Leader of the Opposition conscripted his failed club comedian scriptwriter. In his contribution he made a few pathetic jokes. The one which touched my heart was the one about the lonely hearts club. I have news for the Leader of the Opposition: after the next State election the lonely hearts club will be within the Australian Labor Party. Bob Carr will be by himself. He will be a disgraced man, and his party will be looking for a new leader.

The reality is that this motion is ill-founded and has no substance. The Labor Party would have this House believe that this contract effectively excludes public transport from this infrastructure. On the contrary, it is the first contract in Australia to specifically require two public transport lanes for the entire length of the tollway. As the Minister indicated, bus lanes can be converted to light rail in the future; the contract specifically provides for that. The contract does not condemn the north-west of Sydney to car dependency. To the contrary, the high speed dedicated bus lanes can be converted to light rail to provide two highly significant public transport opportunities which are likely to lead to increased public transport patronage. The opponents of the M2 motorway are opponents of new public transport links.

The Opposition has taken this tollway in isolation from an integrated package of transport measures under way in the north-west sector of the city. The Opposition has excluded the construction of the Parramatta to Hornsby rail link, which will bring significant numbers of new rail users from the central coast directly through to Parramatta. These customers will travel from Parramatta and Sydney's western areas directly through to the north-west sector via interchange with high speed bus ways.

The other element ignored by the Opposition is the construction of one of Australia's most impressive public transport interchanges at Epping station. The facility will have such an impact that people travelling from the north-west in either high speed buses or light rail will be able to join, with a minimum of inconvenience, rapid transit trains to the city. Let us now consider the prospectus which gives the Labor Party such confidence in moving this motion. First, we were told that the Government has a responsibility if the project goes wrong regarding financial arrangements. We were told that the taxpayers of New South Wales would have a liability to pay the consortium. That is an utter lie! If members opposite could read, they would soon see that this is not the situation. Page 25 of the prospectus, under the heading "Traffic Risk", reads:

Investors carry the risk that traffic volumes are lower than those projected.

The risk is with the investors, not the Government. Again, this situation is contrary to that relating to the harbour tunnel. The prospectus states the following about the construction risk:

Abigroup and Obayashi are jointly and severally responsible for completing construction of the M2 Motorway under a predominantly fixed-price and fixed-time contract. As a consequence, the Contractors carry the majority of risk for constructing the M2 Motorway on time and within budget.

The arrangement contains a provision that if the situation changes manifestly, and if the company can prove that its income stream has been affected by acts of the Government, the company can renegotiate the situation. Similarly, if I am a proprietor of a small business, and I decide to sell that business, the person purchasing the goodwill of the business will require me to enter into a restrictive covenant indicating that I would not open another business within a certain number of kilometres for a specified number of years. We have made a business proposal to this company. We indicated that if we change the rules and alter the company's revenue stream, we would negotiate the arrangement. That is no different from the sale of a small business. Obviously people investing in such projects require some form of protection. The arrangement is not unreasonable at all. Nowhere in the agreement does it state that if the Government has not changed the situation, and if investors do not receive the anticipated volume of traffic, taxpayers must pay more or that the terms of agreement will be altered.

The agreement merely indicates that if the Government alters the situation, and if it sets up directly in competition, the contract will be renegotiated. However, the company must prove losses that are attributable to the Government's actions. That in itself allows the Government to build
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alternative roads; it could build another road nearby; and rail could be installed. The Government has the power under the contract to do such things. It will be a matter of saying to the investors, who put up money in good faith, "Yes, we have changed those circumstances, but we are prepared to give compensation." This may be by additional terms and other such measures. I would imagine that every prudent investor would require such an assurance. This is a different situation from the harbour tunnel, in respect of which there is a government guarantee of revenue. There is no government guarantee of revenue in relation to the M2. Page 61 of the prospectus clearly says without qualification whatsoever:

The RTA and the Minister make no representation or warranty in respect of the M2 Motorway traffic usage.

No warranty is given. The only way in which the contract can be altered is if we change the game and we put in something in competition. That is perfectly proper. People are entitled to such an assurance. It is an example of the difference between dealing with the coalition and dealing with a bunch of shonks in the ALP who trump up deals to suit their mates. "Mate" is a great Labor word. It certainly has connotations.

Mr Iemma: You are frothing at the mouth.

Mr MERTON: When I see the honourable member for Hurstville I have a good reason to froth at the mouth. People in the north-west part of Sydney spend an hour and a half travelling to work bumper to bumper. I would expect the honourable member for Parramatta, who is a very astute young member of this Parliament, to vote in support of the M2. The Labor-controlled Parramatta Council supports it, and I would assume that the honourable member would go along with what the council wants.

Ms Harrison: I support public transport.

Mr MERTON: So do we, and that is why we have drafted the contract in a particular way. Page 62 of the prospectus states:

The Company and the Trustee acknowledge that, subject to the Project Documents, the RTA and the Minister have not made any representation, given any information or advice or given any warranty in respect of any information or data supplied by them, including any design documentation, Environmental Impact Statements, reports or any other information or data in respect of the Project.

So it is clear that we have not committed the taxpayers of New South Wales to the banker of last resort. We have not given any warranties on behalf of the taxpayers of New South Wales. We have merely said that if we change the rules by introducing another means of transport that would affect a business that we have leased - in other words, if we alter the playing field - we renegotiate and restructure in fairness to each of the parties. The road is needed by the people of north-western Sydney. In 1988 the Liberal Party under Nick Greiner went to the people and gained a specific mandate for the north-west sector. A similar mandate was given in 1991. The matter was brought before the Parliament some months ago and it decided that it would not refer the matter to a select committee.

Over the last 6½ years the Minister for Transport has rejuvenated transport in New South Wales. It has been a period of starting again with the progressive recovery and expansion of transport that was on the verge of collapse. We remember the red rattlers, the years of decay and the expressway and motorway corridors that Premier Neville Wran decided to sell. We remember rundown buses and trains, inefficient operations and junkets within State Rail costing the taxpayer $3 million a day. In the 1980s the New South Wales Labor Government had become increasingly trapped by paying larger and larger contributions to prop up inefficient transport services. I believe that in some respects the Labor Party was glad that it lost the 1988 election. Transport and law and order were in a mess and the State was heading for a debt of $47 billion. The coalition took hard and decisive steps to overcome what would have thrown New South Wales into the same bankrupt dilemma that Labor States such as Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia faced.

The motion claims that there has been gross maladministration by the Minister. This Government's record in transport compares favourably with the record of the previous Labor Government. There has been a mandate for this road for about 30 years. It was this Government that kept faith with the people and decided to build the motorway. People in north-western Sydney are conservative. They are the silent majority, the so-called forgotten people referred to by Sir Robert Menzies. They know that the road is essential for a realistic and reasonable transport system. Let us analyse the allegations against the Minister. Is there any serious allegation that the Minister is corrupt? No. Is there any serious allegation that he is dishonest? No. Is there any serious allegation that the Minister is negligent? No. Is he merely careless? No. Is he guilty of some other serious, grave or weighty matter? No. The matter gets back to cheap political purposes. The Opposition has been aided and abetted by a few people with vested interests and has brought this matter before the House in the dying throes of the Labor Party. It realises that within four or five months it will face another term in opposition. The motion refers to the Minister's:

. . . gross maladministration of the planning, investigation, determination and awarding of the M2 North West Transport Link contracts, the Minister for Transport no longer possesses the confidence of the House;

As a consequence, this House calls upon the Auditor-General to immediately and urgently fully review the terms and conditions of the M2 contracts . . .

The second part of the motion flows on from the allegation of gross administration. I put to all reasonable members of the House that gross maladministration has simply not been proved. The Minister has acted with propriety at all levels. There have been commissions of inquiry, public inquiries
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and an open process of consultation. There is simply no evidence to suggest maladministration by the Minister. That being so, there is no consequence. Nothing flows from that and the matter ends there. It is proposed that the Auditor-General look at a matter for which contracts have been signed. Unlike the situation with the State Bank, in this case there was no fait accompli. With the State Bank there were merely heads of agreement signed.

The Opposition - and hopefully not the Independents - is now trying to interfere with a contract that has been validly entered into by a government that has a mandate. The matter was dealt with six months ago. The Auditor-General automatically has the power to review every contract of this nature. Members of Parliament have a responsibility to make decisions. Parliament has made a decision in this matter to proceed. Contracts have been executed. People have relied on the contract. People have been compensated and houses have been demolished. It is now too late for the Australian Labor Party to try to interfere with that process and introduce a third party to the negotiations. This is a matter for Parliament and Parliament is the author of its own destiny, as far as this is concerned. This motion has dismally failed. [Time expired.]

Dr MACDONALD (Manly) [9.38]: I do not support the urgency motion in its fullness. I support the reference of the matter to the Auditor-General. I do not agree with the remarks made by the honourable member for Baulkham Hills. The parliamentary process is not such that we must assume that Executive Government has the right to proceed with matters without proper accountability. I make no apology for supporting the reference to the Auditor-General. I have difficulty with a motion of no confidence in this Minister; it is not warranted. I will move an amendment to the effect that this House should censure the Minister for Transport. I indicate that this same process of determining the right form of mass transit system, whether road-based or rail-based, is raging in my electorate.

I would be furious if I, either as a member of Parliament or as a member of the community, were faced with the prospect that a road-based solution had been signed which provided obstacles for a future alternative public transport system. This proposal prejudices such an alternative. It is interesting that communities differ. The community I am from, which has both Liberal and Independent representation, favours a mass transit system, as has been determined by public meetings, polling, and so on. The contract does disadvantage the possibility of a public transport option. We have to look at the underlying concern that it gives primacy to a road-based option. One can argue that there are opportunities to introduce upgrades, other roads and public transport alternatives, but something stands out in the document: it gives primacy to a road-based solution.

In effect, the contract guarantees that the M2 motorway will be the primary transit link within in the north-west area. It does not exclude other options, but it gives primary status to the road-based option. The Minister has sought to preserve that road status against the "material adverse effect", to quote from the report, so that it remains the principal passenger and freight arterial route. That is my concern: it cuts off future options. In this day and age when we are examining urban lifestyle and transport options, it sends out all the wrong messages. I have been advised that the contract excludes - unless compensation is paid - public transport options, other roads and light rail, unless they are built by Abigroup Limited.

The previous Roads and Traffic Authority policy for infrastructure projects, such as the M5 and M4, was that the traffic levels provided the fixed revenue streams. This proposal is different. It is a departure from previous projects where there were guarantees about revenue streams. This proposal locks the Government into a particular system. As the Minister said, with the previous systems with the fixed revenue streams all the risk was with the Government. Of course, that is reflected in the M5 and the harbour tunnel as reported on by the Auditor-General. With the M2 the risk is that there will be a limitation on future policies for future generations. That is indisputable. That limititation may be overcome in future with the payment of compensation. However, one cannot get away from the fact that the contract will limit policies for future generations.

I despair at how these political decisions are made with such short horizons. There is a lack of vision and a lack of long-term strategy. I put it to the House that the vision resides with the community groups and the transport action groups. They are the ones that represent the long-term interests of the State in that area. I have had it put to me that those groups represent a smaller number than the numbers who are in favour of this proposal. Future generations would argue that we should be making decisions now to introduce decent mass transit systems, not the short-term expediency of a road-based system. The Minister and the RTA have been captured by the road lobby, make no mistake about it. The power and influence of the road lobby is immense.

The road lobby includes the car manufacturers, the petroleum industry and the road builders; they are the ones that have captured this whole debate. Yet, we have not seen an acknowledgment that the true external costs of the motor car are taken into account, or that the true impact of the motor car has been properly articulated. We need only to look at the impacts to recognise that we need to move away from the car-based and road-based systems and look at issues such as air pollution. It has been estimated that 40 per cent of CO₂ emissions are from cars. Benzenes are also a problem. The Lord Mayor of Sydney has been talking about locking up buildings to prevent access by air pollution. Other problems include carcinogens from cars, smog, disease, safety and accidents - we can go on and on looking at the impact of the motor car.

It is clear to me that we need to move into a society that is less car dependent. It has been estimated that 30 per cent of cities are taken up as a result of cars; in other words, by roads, garages and
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parking lots. Fuel in Australia will reach peak production in 1996 and Australia will be out of fuel by the year 2010. Yet this contract perpetuates car dependency. In a document produced by the Department of Planning entitled "Future Directions" it is predicted that there will be a 600 per cent increase in car use if we continue to satisfy the current road demand. If we are serious about urban consolidation we need to increase mass transit and reduce car dependency, which is the opposite of what this contract will achieve.

Why is it that governments and Ministers get themselves into these positions? They get sucked into it in the sense that there is a change of direction in terms of infrastructure funding and risk taking, as a result of a rush into joint sector funding and the lure of non-taxation moneys. Understandably, governments do not like to increase taxes. As a result of this bad decision, the community will pay in other ways, such as the impact of cars over the years and the lack of a decent public system. Because of an eagerness to acquire funding, it has been poorly negotiated in the past, as seen in examples referred to by the Auditor-General. I believe it is being poorly negotiated now. I think the M2 contract is a big mistake. We are hobbling and muzzling future policy options. We are enslaving future generations to this car dependency. In effect, the contract provides a subsidy against public transport. The Minister for Transport, and Minister for Roads tries to argue against this. The Minister has provided me with his speaking notes. Page 3 of his notes state:

It could in fact be argued that the M2, with its public transport corridors, has opened up, when considered jointly with the other public transport initiatives in the region, a whole series of new opportunities for public transport in the north-west.

That is drawing a longbow. The Minister has said, "Don't worry about it; we will refer the whole thing to Blake Dawson Waldron" - the solicitors. They have provided a letter, which confirms my worst fears. The letter states:

The Minister must consult in good faith with the Company in respect of any proposed development of public infrastructure servicing the northwest regions of Sydney . . .

That is exactly what we are concerned about. If developments could reasonably be expected to have a material adverse effect on the project, the Minister has to consult the company. The risk is that we will have to pay out large amounts of compensation. The letter continues:

This means of allocating long term contract risk, in our view, is consistent with the approach taken both domestically and internationally to projects similar to this one.

If we are being told that the future way of government is to enter into this sort of contract - which basically says, "We will not build it for you unless you lock out a long-term public transport option" - it is not worth it. Nothing in the Blake Dawson Waldron letter gives me a great deal of comfort. The Minister then says, "Don't worry about it, you have a bit of a bus way". The bus way does not run the whole length of the M2; it runs about halfway - along the western half - and ends up at Epping. We have been told that there is an opportunity for light rail. I have taken advice from the Minister's office; my staff have had discussions with his officers. I understand that a light rail system could be put in, but if it is built by anyone other than Abigroup Limited, it will have to be compensated. If light rail goes in it will be treated the same as alternative public transport infrastructure, as referred to on page 62. It will invoke the material adverse effects clause. I do not think anything in the Minister's speech gives me any comfort that provision has been made for light rail in the future.

We know what the Government's concept about better public transport is in my area. It talked about the bus option on this route. I draw the attention of the Minister to what was described as better buses - State Transit's so-called improvement for buses in my area. It is being referred to as "worser buses" because there has been a cutback in the number of buses. We are able to meet the demands required under the Passenger Transport Act. We are struggling to reach that in our area. In my view, better transport means fewer cars. We have become car dependent - we probably all own cars - merely because there is not a public transport option.

Last month the British royal commission on environmental pollution reported that building roads and increasing road capacity generates traffic. It looked at the M25, which is the London orbital road. It found that 40 per cent of the traffic using the M25 was generated by the new road. The axiom that as we increase road capacity we increase the number of cars using it has been proved time and time again. That mistake is being made here. What does the Minister anticipate to be the increase in the number of cars as a result of this road? Perhaps he could comment on the M25 experience. I wish to move an amendment to the motion of the Leader of the Opposition. I move:

That the question be amended by leaving out all words after the word "That" with a view to adding instead the following words:

this House censures the Minister for Transport for his failure to maximise public transport infrastructure options open to future governments in his determination and awarding of the M2 contracts.

(2) That, as a consequence, this House calls upon the Auditor-General to immediately and urgently fully review the terms and conditions of the M2 contracts for report to the House by 9.00 a.m. Thursday 1 December 1994.

(3) That in his review, the Auditor-General obtain independent legal advice on all matters relating to the M2 contracts, including, but not restricted to, the following matters:

(a) whether the contracts are legally binding;

(b) whether variations in the contracts may be made; and

(c) whether a contract binding governments and taxpayers for up to 45 years is constitutionally valid and whether it is appropriate in light of financial and other issues.

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(4) That this House calls upon the Government to make all documents, including Cabinet and legal documents, available to the Auditor-General to ensure a full, in-depth inquiry under the terms of this motion.

As I have indicated, I am not prepared to support a no-confidence motion in the Minister. However, I believe that he has failed to maximise public transport infrastructure options. It is clear that the price we have had to pay for private sector involvement in the M2 has meant a preclusion of public transport options over the years, unless considerable cost is met by future governments. I have restricted my censure to that issue. I believe it is an absolutely defensible position. I have also tidied up - if I can put it that way - the reference to the Auditor-General. I have given him two extra days. I also acknowledge that it is inappropriate for the Auditor-General to report on acceptable public policy. That is not within the terms of the Act under which he operates. Therefore, I have suggested that the words "valid and acceptable public policy" be replaced by "whether it is appropriate in light of financial and other issues". The final addition is to prevent the investigation inquiry by the Auditor-General being hampered by an inaccessibility to Cabinet and legal documents. It is a very easy for the Government to hamper such an inquiry by not allowing the Auditor-General access to such documents.

I have confidence in the Auditor-General. I have confidence in the reports that he has provided for other infrastructure projects. I believe that he has been constructive and, at the same time, critical of a range of infrastructure projects proposed during the years of both Labor governments and coalition governments. He recently completed an inquiry into the State Bank. His report was accepted by the majority of the members of this House as being credible and unequivocal. I seek support for my amendment. I believe that the M2 contract is a sad story. My final message to the Minister is: he should have stood up to the private sector; he should not have gone all out to get this contract at any cost. The price we are paying is too high.

Mr RICHARDSON (The Hills) [9.58]: I had originally thought that this motion had been moved by the Opposition because the Minister for Transport, and Minister for Roads was actually too good; because his achievements were too strong for the Opposition, and that that gave the Government a real leg-up in the lead-up to the next election. Having listened to the debate this evening, I am convinced that was not the case; the real target appears to be, as it has been for the honourable member for Kogarah for some time, the M2 and transport options for the people of the north-west. Why would that not be the case, given the proud record of this Minister and this Government on both public transport and roads?

As previous speakers have outlined - but I would like to recapitulate because the debate has moved away from some of these areas - over the past six years the Government has saved New South Wales taxpayers $1.53 billion in a turnaround in public transport performance. The Government has reinvested - and I think the honourable member for Manly should note this - more than $3.8 billion in revitalising the State's public transport system. In fact, capital expenditure on public transport is currently at record levels, up by 71 per cent since 1988. The Government has built 21 rail interchanges and commuter car parks for easy and safe transfer of passengers, including four in the north-west area - a $10.6 million interchange at Blacktown, a $4 million car park at Seven Hills, a 295 space car park at Thornleigh and a $500,000 bus-rail interchange at Pennant Hills.

Total annual State Rail Authority cash operating costs are now 24 per cent or $485.8 million lower in real terms than in 1987-88. The red rattlers have gone, replaced by Tangaras; and 147 railway stations have been upgraded - and I note that the honourable member for Canterbury had something to say about that. He also said commuters cannot get a train after midnight. The reason for that is that the Government has introduced the Nightride system on buses, which complements the Nightsafe system on trains, and that is making security much better and the commuters of this city feel much safer riding the trains at night.

The Government has spent 38 per cent more on roads than Labor spent when in office. That is more than $11 billion since 1988, a very substantial sum of money. Of course, the Government has developed an integrated transport strategy which takes into account where the jobs are going to be in the future, where people live, where the schools are and where the transport needs are. I think it is really worth comparing this with Labor's record. The motion being debated asks for the Auditor-General to examine the contract. I have examined what the Auditor-General had to say about the Sydney Harbour Tunnel, one of the proudest achievements of the previous administration.

[Interruption]

I thought the honourable member for Kogarah might like to hear some of this. There are some real gems here for the Labor Party. A number of studies found the tunnel unjustifiable on economic grounds. The Sydney Harbour Tunnel concept was proposed by the Transfield-Kumagai joint venture directly to the Government. A process of calling for tenders to ascertain whether their proposal was the best available for the Government was not followed. The Government of the day agreed to proceed with the tunnel proposal subject to two broad financial criteria - one, harbour crossing tolls were not to exceed $1 in 1986 prices; and, two, construction, financing and operation of the project as a private venture were to be facilitated by lease of public property for a fixed period. The first criterion has been breached already, the Auditor-General noted, resulting from an increase in the toll to $2 upon the opening of the tunnel to the public. Based upon a 1986 toll of $1, at the time of the tunnel opening the toll should have been only $1.42 and this year should have been $1.45.

Mr Langton: Oh, go and squeak somewhere else.

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Mr RICHARDSON: Clearly, the honourable member for Kogarah does not like hearing unpleasant details about his party's failings. Although legally the authority has a reversionary interest in the tunnel after 30 years, the substance of the arrangements indicates that the risks and benefits of ownership presently reside with the authority. A review of the financial projections for the tunnel indicate that the Sydney Harbour Tunnel Control Authority is expected to realise a cumulative net cash flow surplus of only $10 million on the operation of the tunnel. This may raise some doubts over the ability of Sydney Harbour Tunnel Company Limited to repay the authority's loan to it of $223 million. In addition to collecting and retaining tunnel tolls, SHTCL is entitled to payments totalling approximately $2,891 million from the authority over 30 years.

The authority has made an interest-free loan of $223 million to SHTCL for a period of 30 years. Interest forgone on this loan has been estimated to be a minimum of $1,150 million. The nature of the loan is not without question, it being in the nature of quasi-capital. That is a brief rundown on the last major capital project that the Labor Party was involved in. We are talking about a $4,000 million bottom-of-the-harbour scheme. The Labor Party actually had to do that sort of thing, of course, because when Neville Wran came to office in 1976 he sold off all the land that the previous Liberal Government had acquired to build roads and freeways - all those hollow logs, as he would have called them. Of course, Laurie Brereton was scrambling to buy them back 10 or 12 years later at grossly inflated prices.

Even the Granville train disaster did not persuade the Labor Party to spend the money needed on the antiquated rail structure. There was no spending on roads. In fact, the whole system - road, rail and buses - was completely run down. I note that earlier the honourable member for Hurstville said there is no way that New South Wales will get public transport under this deal. Let us see what Labor has in mind for public transport for the north-west sector. In an article in the Sydney Morning Herald dated 8 July - and he will recall this article; I am sure he is very proud of it - the honourable member for Kogarah was quoted as saying:

In other initiatives to lure motorists to public transport, the Opposition restated its commitment to investigate the feasibility of new cross-regional links between Parramatta and Hornsby -

the Government is going ahead with that, but the honourable member for Kogarah proposes to investigate the feasibility of it -

upgrade the Liverpool, Parramatta and Sydney lines; amplify the line between Riverwood and Turella; and upgrade Sydenham junction; improve rail safety -

that is great, is it not? That will do a lot for the people in the north-west -

with designated platforms to be staffed around the clock, public platforms, car parks and walkways, waiting rooms and telephones and bus and taxi pick ups; restructure the Roads and Traffic Authority -

honourable members know he is very keen on doing that. He has a real downer on the Roads and Traffic Authority -

to make it more open and accountable, and remove tolls on the M4, M5 and M6 motorways.

That is just to wrap it all up. My understanding is that it would cost in the order of $600 million to buy out all the private sector agencies that have been involved in building those roads. I also have a business briefing note dated 25 July from the Leader of the Opposition, who moved this motion in the House today. He talked about his centrepiece commitment for the north-west centre, and said he will duplicate the Blacktown-Riverstone line and examine the feasibility of light rail along the Sunnyholt Road corridor. That is fascinating because he talked at some length about public transport problems in The Hills electorate. He talked about Cherrybrook, Castle Hill and Kellyville. Kellyville is the closest part of The Hills to the Blacktown-Riverstone line, but at its closest point it is six kilometres away; and Castle Hill is something like 12 to 14 kilometres away. I do not quite understand what the honourable member is driving at. It would still be quicker for people to go down Castle Hill Road to Pennant Hills or Beecroft railway stations than to have anything to do with the Blacktown-Riverstone line, whether it be a duplicated or single track.

A link is still not proposed to Rouse Hill for the 300,000 people who will move into the north-west sector. I do not believe the honourable member for Canterbury has ever visited the north-west area, but I remind him of the correct pronunciation of Rouse Hill. The Government has already provided a dedicated bus link along Sunnyholt Road at Blacktown to the new $10.6 million rail interchange. Bus priority measures are in place on Windsor Road. As everyone knows, the M2 will be built with dedicated bus lanes capable of being upgraded to light rail without penalty, contrary to the earlier suggestion of the Leader of the Opposition. I want to correct something the honourable member for Manly said. He said that only Abigroup would be able to introduce light rail. In fact anyone will be able to operate the light rail - the Government, the private sector, the consortium, or whoever submits the best offer. The Government is committed to the Epping-Carlingford link.

Mr Photios: Hear! Hear!

Mr RICHARDSON: The Minister is enthusiastic about the rail link through his electorate. That rail link will offer a connection from Hornsby and the central coast through to Parramatta. The Government is building the Y link so that people will be able to travel directly from Liverpool to Parramatta without having to change trains. The Government is also proceeding with the light rail link at Pyrmont and the airport rail link. The Government had to get existing projects right before it turned to new construction. The Minister for Transport and his predecessor, the honourable member for Barwon,
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should have to make no excuses for the road building program. The program has not only assisted the strong economic growth being enjoyed by New South Wales, it has also assisted in significantly reducing commuting times. It has also helped to reduce the road toll to the lowest level since 1949. I do not believe anyone should be ashamed of that; it is a magnificent achievement. The Government regards the M2 as an integral part of that program. Earlier this year, when a motion was moved to establish an inquiry into the M2, I invited the honourable member for Kogarah to come to The Hills and experience the traffic problems.

Ms Allan: The air pollution.

Mr RICHARDSON: The honourable member for Blacktown mentions air pollution. I will come to that in a moment. The honourable member for Kogarah would not come to my electorate. He is safely ensconced in Kogarah with the rail system honourable members heard about earlier. He is comfortable and does not want to know what happens elsewhere in the State, unlike the Government, which is committed to providing facilities for everyone without fear or favour. It is worth noting that I took an hour and 20 minutes to drive to Parliament this morning. Yesterday morning I took the train, but today I needed my car. The Deputy Premier spoke about the possibility of commuting by train, as the honourable member for Kogarah has done. Often one needs one's car for a range of reasons. That is certainly true of my constituents. Many of them are managers and sales representatives who travel cross-country. They do not travel along dedicated train lines and therefore it is not possible for them, no matter how many heavy rail lines are provided, to use trains. That is why 74 per cent of the people in my electorate support the construction of the M2.

The honourable member for Blacktown and the honourable member for Kogarah mentioned pollution. I do not believe anyone doubts the Government's commitment to taking action about the air pollution problem in Sydney. People in the twenty-first century will not want to give up the personal mobility they have enjoyed for most of their lives. I refer the House to an article that appeared in the Sun Herald on 30 October about a project that was initiated a year ago by the United States President, Bill Clinton. He is encouraging major car manufacturers in the United States to produce a new type of motor car that will be partly solar powered, will use liquid fuel for only part of the time, will get the equivalent of 200 miles to the gallon, will have the same sort of range and performance as the cars we drive today, will emit virtually no pollution and will be the same price as a regular car. If those cars were available, I would question the enormous push towards public transport to which the Opposition is paying lip service, and it is only lip service because honourable members have heard what the Opposition plans to do. That is almost nothing, and that is what they did during the 12 long years they were in government.

I question whether the Labor alternative is the way to go. I suggest it is not. I suggest that an integrated transport strategy with a range of options is very much the way of the future. The Government is committed, nevertheless, to public transport. Dedicated bus lanes and other issues have already been outlined. The bus lanes in the M2 project are worth noting. In peak hours one bus will travel down these lanes every two minutes on the way to the modern Epping rail interchange. People will be able to leave the buses and catch a train to the city almost straightaway. The provision of these sorts of services will make public transport much more attractive. The Leader of the Opposition seems to have suddenly found the prospectus for the M2, and has suggested that some of his assertions are brand new. I have news for him. On August 26, the date when the contract was signed, I was given a briefing document. That document was available to any member of this Parliament who wanted it. On page 2 it states:

Renegotiation events

* The Project Deed contains sophisticated contractual machinery for dealing with key project risk events which threaten project by ability.

* Minimises direct Government financial support for the project.

* Emphasises -

and this is very important, and I am sure the honourable member for Blacktown will be interested in it -

continuing role of government in long term major infrastructure projects.

That means that the Government can still build alternative roads or rail links after negotiation or consultation with the consortium. The briefing document continues:

* Allows parties to renegotiate appropriate response to limited number of identified risk events which threaten project viability including force majeure . . . government actions which either discriminate against or prejudice the consortium in operating or maintaining the M2, changes in law and civil disobedience.

* All of these risks are beyond the control of the Proponents and none of these risks include traffic volume or revenue.

* The objective of renegotiations in this limited set of circumstances is to restore the original financial parameters of the project - the basis on which debt and equity agreed to support the project.

I wonder why the Leader of the Opposition has suddenly discovered all of these things in the prospectus when they were written three months ago. If he had some concerns about these matters, perhaps he should have raised them with the Minister of Transport at that time. He did not have the concerns, because they are not real; they are fabricated. Honourable members have heard the Minister for Transport say that if a freeway is built alongside the M2, the consortium would be consulted because the base case would obviously be affected. Consultation would be natural. As the honourable member for Baulkham Hills said, it is standard commercial
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practice. If one buys a magazine and wants to publish it, it is common practice in the magazine publishing industry to insert a clause in the contract to prevent the person from whom the magazine is bought from publishing another magazine in the same area for a period of five years. If another road were constructed alongside the M2, clearly the construction of that road would be negotiated with the consortium.

There is nothing unusual about that. The contract for the M2 was put together using the expertise of some top companies, including Coopers and Lybrand as the investigating accountants, and the Macquarie Bank. Are the Leader of the Opposition and the honourable member for Kogarah suggesting something is wrong with the way those companies have structured a commercial deal? The riders are standard to any contract and there is absolutely nothing untoward in what has been done. In summing up, my great concern with the referral to the Auditor-General is the effect that it will have on private sector involvement with public sector infrastructure in the future. Even the Prime Minister and the Federal Minister for Health, when she was Deputy Premier of Western Australia, are committed to the idea of private sector involvement in public sector infrastructure. [Time expired.]

Ms ALLAN (Blacktown) [10.18]: If ever there was a sleazy deal intended to condemn Sydney -

[Interruption]

It is all right for the honourable member for Oxley; he lives on the leafy upper north coast of New South Wales. He is not out in western and north-western Sydney breathing all those benzine fumes and everything else that gets spewed into the atmosphere from all those cars that the Government is putting into the community. He is a hypocrite, and the other hypocrite, the Minister for Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs, who does not even live in his electorate but lives on the leafy north shore, is ready to jump into a bus if his ministerial limousine is not available that day. It is the M2 motorway contract that will condemn Sydney to decades of escalating air pollution and all the related ill health effects. At least the Opposition and the non-aligned Independents have been talking about these effects for some time. I am appalled by contributions from Government members, who represent the millions of people living in western and north-western Sydney. Those members have failed to acknowledge an already existing problem.

Even the Sydney Morning Herald has discovered western Sydney in the past few years. First it discovered toxic algal pollution in the Hawkesbury River and now it has discovered poor air quality in western and north-western Sydney. Every night on the television we are reminded of air quality, yet the honourable member for Baulkham Hills, the honourable member for The Hills and others in that area do not even know there is a problem. Those honourable members are defending a Minister who is indefensible. At the present time he is foisting an even greater air pollution problem on western and north-western Sydney. This is probably the most breathtaking example of the Fahey's Government ad hoc approach to the planning of this city, driven by an obsession with building more roads and tollways, at the expense of public transport. That is not surprising when the Minister for Planning is a National Party member who gives no priority to these issues.

Today we have heard evidence about how the Minister for Roads has signed away Sydney's future. He has jettisoned any semblance of Government support for public transport - a critical area of his portfolio just cast away to please his mates, and perhaps his future employers, the various tollway companies. The contract reinforces the dominance of the road builders and the engineers, and downgrades the ability of government to control the shape of this city and to ensure coordinated transport planning. We have just heard five minutes of absolute rubbish from the honourable member for The Hills, who explained how the Government was going to control these commercial operators who for the next 50 years will be in charge of transport planning in north-western Sydney. These are pathetic excuses for ineptitude on the part of the Minister for Transport in signing away the future of his constituents.

The Minister for Transport, by signing the M2 motorway contract without reference to the Parliament, the local community or the broader community, has personally hammered the last nail into Sydney's planning coffin. I wish to look in detail at the implications for Sydney of this contract and why the Minister deserves to lose the confidence of the House. First, he signed the contract on the M2 in total secrecy and resisted all efforts over months of debate, questioning and scrutiny within this House to make those provisions public. The public and the House have not been informed about the various government guarantees associated with the project or the extent of government financial exposure if the project fails financially.

Of course, this is totally at odds with the report of the Public Accounts Committee on the private financing of public infrastructure projects. Over the past few months I have had occasion to remind the Government about the report, as have my colleagues. I remind the House that the honourable member for Eastwood was Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, another player in this sordid little game of dudding the health of his constituents in north-western Sydney. That report recommended that there be transparency - I do not think the Government knows the meaning of the word - in dealings between the Government and private sector companies to preserve public interest and financial accountability and, further, in many cases it is appropriate for the Government to release summary details of the contract and any guarantees.

On occasions when such issues that are of major importance to the whole of Sydney and of grave concern to the Opposition and the community have arisen, the Opposition has had to drag the Government kicking and screaming to debate them. The recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee
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have fallen into the too-hard basket, despite their acceptance by the private sector, which has made sympathetic submissions in line with the final recommendations of the committee. The private sector squirms every time such a matter is debated in the Parliament because it appreciates that that debate is unnecessary.

Mr Photios: It sure is, and you create that debate with Auditor-General's reports, legislation committees -

Ms ALLAN: Unlike the Government, the private sector does not need to hide. The Minister for Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs should return to live in Ermington and breathe the air out there now. As the former Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment he should hang his head in shame. The PAC recommendations were not revolutionary. The matters were endorsed by the Auditor-General at various workshops organised by the Public Accounts Committee. It is no mistake that the Opposition's motion refers this matter to the Auditor-General. I am pleased that the honourable member for Manly has at least endorsed that part of the motion because a detailed analysis of the implications of this project is necessary. This is a rotten contract and we are slowly discovering that it compromises and abandons the public interest.

Honourable members from the north coast and the leafy north shore can abandon the people of north-western Sydney because they and their children do not have to breathe the air. The M2 motorway contract ensures a ban on the Government providing public transport to the north-west sector for the next 50 years. The north-west region of Sydney is the city's worst air pollution zone, with high levels recorded on 32 days between April last year and July this year, yet the Government, under this contract, is powerless to upgrade public transport systems, and is not factoring that into the M2 motorway contract. Government constituents, including the Minister for Transport, the honourable member for Northcott, will continue to breathe that polluted air. It is in direct contravention of the Government's integrated transport strategy for greater Sydney. That was not the most powerful document that has ever been released by any government, but even that document raises issues relevant to this debate. In part it stated:

New investment should not, however, lead to a diversion of effort away from continued improvements to the existing system and a sustained sense of what makes a public transport system really work well.

Mass passenger transport must be able to compete with the private car. Reliability, frequency and responsiveness of services and the ability to make direct trips without interchange or with minimum fuss need to be key performance goals.

So much for an integrated public transport system and the Minister's credibility; they have gone out the door. Seriously Concerned Residents Against Pollution - or SCRAP - operate from Carlingford, which is in the electorate of the honourable member for Baulkham Hills, and has consistently opposed the tollway because of its social and environmental impact. This organisation has cited serious evidence to suggest that the Government is ignoring the proper assessment of air quality in the north-west so that it could fast track the approval for the project. SCRAP was informed by letter from the EPA that in August 1992, at a meeting between the Environment Protection Authority, the Roads and Traffic Authority and its consultants, and the Department of State Development that the following occurred:

. . . errors and omissions in the air quality impact assessment were discussed in detail. the RTA informed the EPA that the EIS process was complete and that the Air Working Papers could not be rewritten. The RTA's consultants did, however, undertake to provide the EPA with further information, but this has not happened to date.

In other words, a meeting occurred in August 1992 with the EPA, the RTA and its consultants. Those present at the meeting were appreciative of the fact that the data on this proposal was inadequate. Of course, the RTA bully boys and the Department of State Development bureaucrats, and their highly paid consultants, roughed up the Environment Protection Authority. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment should hang his head in shame because he knows that the Environment Protection Authority was done over again. It was known that all the air quality data reports were inadequate, and the EPA raised the matter. The RTA threw up its hands and said, "This is too hard so go away; we do not care about you as you are just a bunch of lapdogs. We will not take you seriously." It was a case of onward Christian soldiers, until we reached the situation we face today.

The documentary evidence was conclusive that the RTA recognised flaws in its air quality impact assessment, but it failed to respond adequately to the issue. The RTA was alerted to the problem in August 1992 but it bowled over the EPA, which dared to raise the inadequacy of the material. The RTA continued on its merry way. The Government is pursuing this public transport option for the north-west of Sydney because it knows that the original material was flawed; the Government did not factor into its dealings the proper air quality data assessment reports, even though they were highlighted. Is it any wonder that the champion of the environment in this State, the Minister for the Environment, has abandoned his overhaul of the Clean Air Act, which is several decades out of date. That is part of the protection of the environment administration - stage two, legislation.

This legislation is vital, yet it has been put off indefinitely. The meeting to which I have referred could have enabled the EPA to put its money where its mouth is; that is, it could have ensured that the RTA could not continue with its proposal based on such inadequate environmental assessment. The ban on public transport for the north-west of Sydney by the Minister for Transport, as proposed in this M2 contract, is a poor consolation prize for the hundreds of thousands of children living in that area who have asthma. According to an asthma morbidity study published in the Medical Journal of Australia,
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19.5 per cent of children in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and the upper Hunter Valley suffer from asthma, with 17.1 per cent being medically diagnosed asthmatics. A large proportion of those children live in western and north-western Sydney.

Mr O'Doherty: And more still live in Tasmania.

Ms ALLAN: That is reassuring. That salvages the whole debate on behalf of the Government. Many things happen in Tasmania, but what does that have to do with the M2 motorway contract? Maybe the honourable member for Ku-ring-gai should stay away from Tasmania for a while and remain in his electorate. He should also visit the electorates of some of his colleagues to see the problems associated with this contract. Another clause in the M2 motorway contract precludes the Government from upgrading Epping Road or any other roads to specified regions in the north-west sector for the next 50 years. No matter how much the Minister for Transport bleats about that aspect, the clause is part of the agreement and it will discourage the development of alternative transport options for those road users. That will not be welcome news for people using the existing system, as they will be forced on to the tollways because of the increasing inadequacy of the road infrastructure controlled by the Government. The Government will let the existing roads run down, and this will discourage road users and force them on to the tollway. This will increase the air pollution problem. That is brilliant planning, Bruce! All the well paid planners in the Department of Transport and the Roads and Traffic Authority should be ashamed of themselves.

Mr ACTING-SPEAKER (Mr Hazzard): Order! I remind the honourable member for Blacktown of the ruling of Mr Speaker that members should be referred to by their correct title.

Ms ALLAN: One of my most dramatic concerns about the M2 motorway contract relates to the provision of drainage basins and water course alteration. We have asked the Minister for Transport questions on this issue, and his response in the past has been absolutely inadequate. The M2 motorway contract details which are currently available indicate that the proposal will provide for a reservation which will encroach on the Lane Cove River National Park.

Mr Baird: It does not!

Ms ALLAN: The Minister bleats again. The Minister did not even know that the corridors ran up the middle of the road; how would the Minister know whether the project will encroach on the Lane Cove River National Park? I do not understand why the Minister for the Environment, or that other almost invisible, lazy honourable member for Gladesville, have nothing to say about this proposal. Is this not an important issue for all the people living in Gladesville and Ermington?

Mr Photios: On a point of order: the honourable member well knows that the honourable member for Gladesville is currently paired due to illness.

Ms Allan: I did not know that.

Mr Photios: It ill behoves her, given the nature of the honourable member's situation, to be alleging that he is a lazy soul. It would be appropriate for her to apologise under the circumstances.

Ms ALLAN: I will not apologise. He is almost as lazy as the Minister for Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs!

Mr ACTING-SPEAKER: Order! The Chair is a little disappointed about the tone of debate. Members should exhibit some decorum and attempt to confine their remarks to the leave of the motion.

Ms ALLAN: I hope that when the honourable member for Gladesville recovers from his current temporary illness, he will be jumping on the back of the Minister for Transport due to outrage about this provision. All his constituents will be outraged when they realise that the Lane Cove River National Park will be pared back as a result of the M2 tollway proposal. They are already angry about the traffic flow which will be hurled into the electorate as a result of road works to the north-west, but the national park is also to be sacrificed. I hope that the Minister for the Environment finds out what is happening in his portfolio as soon as possible so that he can intercede on this proposal on behalf of the Lane Cove River National Park. We do not want key sections of the national park uprooted and bulldozed to the benefit of a private road company.

Mr O'Doherty: The Bongil Bongil man.

Ms ALLAN: That is another debate for another day. In two consecutive days we have seen a government prepared to ignore the needs to expand a national park. Unquestionably, the M2 motorway contract will effectively hand over this public resource; that is, an area of the national park which is of high conservation value. This will be used exclusively by private interests. Yesterday, Bongil Bongil National Park was relegated to the lowest priority in the State Bank corporatisation legislation; today it is the turn of the Lane Cove River National Park. This is tiger territory for the Labor Party. This legislation will affect people who vote for this Government, yet this Government is prepared to ignore them. The Government is prepared to make the quality of air breathed by these people as poor as possible, and it is taking away their last remnants of natural bushland.

It is not good enough for the Minister for Transport to give us a smile and a joke. I realise he will be leaving this place in the next few months, we do not want him to leave behind a legacy of poor air quality in western and north-west Sydney. We want a real public transport option, and that has not been guaranteed in the Minister's motorway contract. We have heard about light rail and buses, but we have no reality. We will have another tollway and more cars on the road. The air pollution problems which are being monitored currently will be exacerbated as a result of the Minister's activities. [Time expired.]

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Mr O'DOHERTY (Ku-ring-gai) [10.38]: It is a pleasure to follow the honourable member for Blacktown, who spoke about air quality issues, although I shall not confine my remarks entirely to them. This Government introduced air quality monitoring in Sydney. It has recently increased the number of air quality monitoring stations in the west of Sydney. The honourable member for Blacktown acknowledged this readily in a public debate in which I and the honourable member for Parramatta were involved during the Parramatta by-election campaign. The honourable member for Blacktown was given the job of ferrying the now member for Parramatta to the public meeting and minding her at the meeting. When we talked about air quality the honourable member for Blacktown readily acknowledged that it was this Government that began air quality monitoring and that has done more than any other post-war government to improve the quality of air right across the Sydney metropolitan area, particularly in western Sydney and the north-west sector. Lead levels are coming down. There is an interesting study into benzene which I shall not go into now but it is the subject matter for a good debate on another occasion. The situation in regard to air quality is not as the honourable member projected it.

The motion moved by the Leader of the Opposition is very serious. He did not speak to the motion. He made one substantive point referring to public transport options. The motion refers to gross maladministration, planning, investigation and determination. The Leader of the Opposition talked about none of those things. He did not even provide an argument in support of the allegations made in the motion. Government members will not stand by and allow the Minister for Transport, of all Ministers, to have such a motion hanging above his head. The allegations in it are not true. Other members have already indicated that they will not support the motion of the Leader of the Opposition and when the motion is rejected it will for all time put beyond question the credibility, integrity and honesty of the Minister and condemn the credibility, honesty and integrity of the Leader of the Opposition because of his bringing forward such a motion containing dishonest arguments.

The amendment moved by the honourable member for Manly was supported with an argument about public roads and what he referred to as the "car option". The honourable member for Manly has a particular bent against the provision of roads but he has not lived in the north-west. I not only grew up within 500 metres of the route of the M2 motorway, I lived in Beecroft and Carlingford during my youth and for part of my married life I lived in Glenhaven, an area which has been very much affected by the choked up traffic that the M2 will relieve. Now my constituents are telling me that they very much favour the M2 option. We are continuing to fund public transport at record levels but we also have to have, as the Minister rightly said, a balanced view on roads.

The honourable member for Manly referred to locking people into one solution. Every decision a government makes locks us into a solution of one kind or another. Building heavy rail in the area would lock us into a heavy rail solution. Government is about making decisions that will be binding at least for a time. The honourable member for Manly finds it very easy to criticise everything but at the end of the day he does not have to be accountable for the decisions. Government is about making decisions in all good faith with all honesty and with all due process, which is what the Minister has done. This place still has to function but if the honourable member for Manly had his way we would close down not only the north-west sector but the rest of Sydney as well. It is absolutely incorrect to say, as the Leader of the Opposition said, that the contract limits public transport. It specifically provides for growth in public transport to the north-west sector. The people of the north-west sector and the people in my electorate demand the M2 as a solution to some very difficult problems which will only get worse without a balanced approach. I do not support the amendment and I do not support the original motion.

Mr HATTON (South Coast) [10.46]: This debate is all about the objectives of an integrated land transport system, the obligations on a Government Minister in terms of planning, wise expenditure of money, the accountability of the process, openness and the public's right to know, and the role of the Auditor-General. Unfortunately, it is a fact of life that a Minister may do much that is good but be judged on what he has done that is not good. The motion is explicit, and therefore it is on that explicit motion that a decision has to be made. It is a matter of record that the Minister for Transport has pumped money into State Rail on line improvements, signals, bridges, and rolling stock. The previous Labor Government sadly neglected the public transport system but paid the price for that at an election, and I do not believe that can be used as a defence in regard to this motion.

I shall deal with this debate from first principles. The whole point of an integrated land transport system is the efficient movement of people, the maintenance of the environment against excessive noise and chemical pollution and, in the case of our big cities, maintaining the viability of the central business district, the ease of movement of people and the quality of life in the inner city area. In 1989 when I met the Mayor of Stockholm I asked, "What do you think would be your greatest achievement?" He said, "That somebody can catch a salmon off a bridge in the middle of Stockholm city". When a Minister decides to enter into a contract in which the Auditor-General should have been involved in the first place and was not, and there is a lack of accountability and a restriction of options and there is a policy of involving private sector development in a certain way, the Minister must pick up the tab.

I have considered the issues before us in relation to the contract, the legal obligation that is placed on governments which restricts the options of public transport for future generations and, the constraints on transport planning and on flexibility. The draft prospectus was lodged with the Australian Stock
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Exchange on 8 November 1994. As the Minister said, the contract for the harbour tunnel - it was an absolutely disgraceful contract about which I spoke at the time; the Labor Government was properly condemned at the time and since - provided a Roads and Traffic Authority guarantee on traffic volume. A fixed revenue stream was provided with any shortfall topped up by the Government. In this case the Minister must, under the contract, preserve the road status against material adverse effects so that it remains the principal passenger and freight arterial route.

I am not impressed by the letter from the solicitors. I can understand why they would bring such a letter forward: they were the ones involved with the contract in the first place. I cannot see how the company would not have a good argument by saying, "When you interfere with traffic streams obviously we have a case for compensation". It is a fixed and measurable thing, there are traffic counts on nearby roads, there are ticket sales on any transport option and obviously one would look at the projected curve of increased traffic volume. If there is an interruption in that projected curve, one can argue that one of the other options exercised at the time had an effect on it. I cannot see why such an argument would not succeed in court.

The status guarantees that the contract could be renegotiated and compensation paid for the development of any public transport services that reduce the M2 traffic level. The status includes roads which feed the M2. The Roads and Traffic Authority has made a commitment that there will be no traffic jams at either end of the M2. I would like the Minister in reply to explain how the problem at the eastern end of the M2 will be solved. Will we have to build a tunnel or undertake some other form of strategy? I would like the Minister to answer questions about a possible conflict of interest with the Abigroup Limited part of the M2 consortium, which is also part of the $1.2 billion rail link proposal. Do we have a bet each way? Will there be liability for compensation if the rail link affects the M2 if the consortium is also involved in the rail link?

It is claimed that the RTA will indemnify the M2 consortium against rulings on Aboriginal sites, contaminated land and endangered fauna. The contract has been completed while there is an outstanding land claim, and that is a real problem for the Government. For many years in Sydney we have suffered from the lack of an integrated land transport system. Ted Mack, the former Independent member for North Shore, who sat on the back bench with me, used to talk a lot about it. I respected his opinion. This week the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Frank Sartor, said he would like to see the inner city free of cars. We continue to approve of tollways that pump cars into the inner city, and we have problems with lead and benzene pollution that affects the intelligence of young children.

The option of a light rail system was not considered in the harbour tunnel proposal. The Government did not consider alternative expressions of interest and the contract was very restrictive. The whole process was a disgrace. Darling Harbour was built on the site of a rail terminus, a marshalling yard, where railway facilities are available, yet the area was linked to the central business district by a monorail. Can anyone imagine anything so ridiculous! We are not making use of that rail network to service the Balmain and Lilyfield areas.

I have an interest in contract openness and competitive tendering. The Court of Audit in The Hague, for example, does not recognise commercial in confidence, and within a couple of months of a contract being negotiated the detail of the contract is on the table for all to see. I would like to see the Auditor-General involved a lot earlier in such matters. We must get away from the crazy situation of allowing human beings to carry tonnes of metal - polluting the environment - as they move from point A to point B. Have we learnt nothing from the dismal history of the ALP harbour tunnel, Darling Harbour, the lack of integrated transport planning and Los Angeles type nightmares? The Minister for Transport is well placed to learn from those experiences.

Joint sector funding brings with it two kinds of costs. Sure, it delivers dollars - which are scarce. But the Government does not necessarily have dollars to spend on infrastructure. On the other hand, the concept demands its pound of flesh - there is no free lunch - and it restricts the transport options well into the future. The questions that need to be answered, and have not been answered in the 20 years that I have been in Parliament, are: who the hell is overseeing the whole transport network? Who ensures that we deliver people from A to B with the least pollution, the greatest efficiency and the least expenditure? The bottom line is that there is no point in comparing Labor and Liberal-National Party policies. Labor paid the price of its failure: we now have a new government - a new order. The Government, on assuming office, resumed the responsibility. There must be a full and open inquiry into the strategies, structure and planning of the RTA - of its resources, future directions and basis of philosophy.

I deeply regret the mistake I made on 9 March. I want that recorded in Hansard. I made a grievous error. On 9 March the honourable member for Kogarah lobbied hard to establish a parliamentary select committee. The Minister said to me, "Look, this contract situation has gone right down the line. We have expended so much money. We have undergone these negotiations, please stick with us". I stuck with him, and I regret that. There ought to have been a full inquiry at that time, and I apologise to the people I have let down. I have given this matter serious consideration. Perhaps the select committee would have been able to resolve some of these issues. I admit to that mistake.

I will not, as my notes indicate, go through all the issues on compensation, drainage of the Lane Cove River National Park, the primacy of the tollway and the submissions I have received both for and
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against this project. In conclusion, I state that one of the best things that has happened during the life of this Parliament is the establishment of a public works committee, on the initiative of the honourable member for Manly. I congratulate him on that. The committee assesses the environmental, social and financial impacts of major public works in the future. Hopefully, that will result in a wiser expenditure of money, on a bipartisan basis. I do not believe that this Minister, on his record, deserves to face a no confidence motion. I will be voting for his censure.

Ms MOORE (Bligh) [10.56]: It is a pity that such an important issue as integrated transport and traffic strategies for this important part of Sydney has to be debated through the mechanism of a no confidence motion. Some very important matters have been raised tonight - issues that affect many citizens of Sydney. We should be getting commitments about these issues from both the coalition and the Australian Labor Party at this time. Never has so much been said in the media about the impact on people of bad government planning decisions. The bad decisions of the past are coming back to haunt us all. Today my phone has been running hot with calls from members of the environment movement, people I have worked closely with over a decade trying to improve the environment of residents of the inner city. As a member of this Parliament I have worked hard to try to save part of the natural environment.

People I have worked closely with over the years are using this occasion as a window of opportunity to try to put on the public agenda the whole issue of where public transport is going into the next decade. The Fiftieth Parliament, with all its mechanisms for accountability and participatory democracy, with the Independent Commission Against Corruption and an independent Auditor-General, provides a much healthier climate for decisions to be made in the interests of the New South Wales community. It is in stark comparison to the way things were done in the 1980s in this Parliament. I was not a member of the Parliament then, but I observed the proceedings from my position on the city council.

I was absolutely disgusted at the way legislation that would impact on the inner city community was rushed through the Parliament late at night. I refer particularly to the Darling Harbour legislation, decisions about the monorail, decisions about the harbour tunnel, and the Moore Park stadium, without an environmental impact statement. I am talking about the lack of scrutiny of contract. I am reminded of the effects of those terrible decisions made in the 1980s by the Labor Government. The Labor Opposition transport spokesman is incredibly hypocritical and cynical in raising these issues in light of his party's record on environmental and planning decisions that affected the people of Sydney.

All I can say is: thank God for the Fiftieth Parliament and the introduction of greater mechanisms for accountability and participatory democracy. We do not have the late night specials that we had during the Wran years, which have led to incredible problems in the inner area which I represent. The decision in relation to the harbour tunnel has meant that every day of the week an extra 20,000 vehicles pollute the urban consolidated area. That is why I have been banging on the door of this Minister asking him to do something about the gridlock which has been created in Australia's leading city. That is the Brereton legacy; that is the Neville Wran legacy; that is the Bob Carr legacy.

When all those disastrous planning decisions were being made on Darling Harbour, on the monorail, on the harbour tunnel and on the Moore Park stadium, who was the most silent member of this Parliament? The then Minister for Planning and Environment, Bob Carr. I feel very passionate about this issue. We are still trying to pick up the pieces of the legacy of his period as Minister for Planning and Environment. The Minister for Planning from Goulburn - the squire from the country as people call him - is a better Minister than Bob Carr was. We have problems that are not being addressed. It is terrible that we have to discuss such important issues in this way, piggybacked to a no confidence motion in the Minister for Transport.

I will not support the motion of no confidence in this Minister. I might not support his policies or his ideology, but since he has taken over the roads portfolio we have had much more responsive and sensitive policy to problems in the inner area, an urban consolidated area. People are living in a way in which both the Federal Government and State Government say they should be living - that is, in high density, close to facilities. They are not being moved out to the west and to the north, needing the M2 freeway to connect them to facilities. They have to put up with all the problems non-caring governments have decided for them in the past.

This Minister has been responsive to these issues. Since he took over the portfolio, members of the Roads and Traffic Authority have been much more responsive. I say on behalf of the people that I represent that we are very grateful for the changes that have occurred over the last year. We are also grateful that the Minister has been responsive to public transport needs, particularly in relation to bus and ferry services. The Minister recently invited me to make suggestions for a light rail route for the Moore Park area. Such a system will certainly be needed over the next decade, as we approach the year 2000.

Five Olympic venues are in my electorate. Thousands of people will travel to Moore Park to the sporting stadia. I have followed up the request from the Minister with a submission about a light rail route, following discussion with the Light Rail Association. If I were to even consider supporting a censure of this Minister on issues of public transport and traffic, I certainly would have to try to work out a way in which to move a censure motion against the former Minister for Planning and Environment for the terrible decisions that were made during the 1980s. It is not
Page 5594
possible for me to do that. This Minister has responded to the big issues in the inner city; he has had a sensitive, responsive and creative approach to the problems.

I refer briefly to the conflicting information I have been given on this issue, an issue which I am not closely associated or acquainted with. However, I am certainly concerned about it. What concerns me most is the fact that, particularly through the 1970s and 1980s, people - usually low-income, working-class people - were dumped in the outer suburbs, without infrastructure and support services. Throughout the last decade governments have had to try to pick up the pieces and provide transport links for them. The current appalling air pollution levels are a result of the lack of public transport.

I do not believe that that is the fault of the actions or inactions of this Minister; I believe it was the fault of the Ministers during the 1980s. I believe that it was unconscionable for a Labor government to dump people in those outer suburbs without infrastructure and transport, just as it has been unconscionable that successive governments have shown little concern for people living in the inner areas with respect to protecting their amenities. An issue which was to follow this debate and which dominated question time is the impact of the third runway on people in established suburbs. That is a legacy of the Federal Labor Government and the coalition Government for supporting the proposal.

Today I have received information from environment groups. It reflects their growing concern about increasing air pollution. The daily newspapers are currently dominated by the concerns of Sydney communities about increasing noise pollution. It is about time governments started some long-term integrated transport and traffic land use planning that was responsible and in the interests of the community. It is interesting that no confidence and censure has been moved in this Minister. I understand a potential public transport option has been included in this road project. That certainly did not occur in the 1980s. The Minister has said, and those who have supported him have said, that there are adequate potential links to that public transport corridor and that options will remain open.

That is not what the Opposition is saying and it is not what the environment groups are saying. It is probably salutary for the Government and the Opposition to take on board the very strong feeling in the community to try to get some responsible land use and transport infrastructure in place for future generations. I do not support, and never have supported, this Government's policy of not providing a core government service and of contracting out public service projects. As honourable members know, I have pushed for many years for the link at Taylor Square, to try to do something with the traffic dumped in eastern Sydney as a result of the harbour tunnel. But I have said from day one that I do not support a toll. I will not support the no confidence motion. I have given adequate reasons for that. I will not censure this Minister. I do not agree with the basic policy of the Government in relation to tolls on road projects. However, I support its right to govern. That has been my policy as an Independent in the Fiftieth Parliament. I will support making use of the person I consider to be the servant of the Parliament - that is, the Auditor-General - to scrutinise this project. If it does not stand up to scrutiny, that will be another issue.

Mr BAIRD (Northcott - Minister for Transport, and Minister for Roads) [11.09]: There are so many issues honourable members could be debating, so many issues that confront us as a State; so many issues that concern us overall, but what we have had today is a political frolic. It started off with the Leader of the Opposition going through his normal theatrics, the grand master of B-grade acting, throwing out his invective and insults. One of my colleagues had not actually seen the right wing of the Labor Party perform in this House. Honourable members see the nice face of the Labor Party in the form of Carmen Lawrence, but when they see the ugly face of the Labor Party - the rudeness and invective thrown across the Chamber - it is particularly interesting to see how they react.

This is a political frolic because it is about making sure that we waste time. The Leader of the Opposition wants to extend the life of this Parliament, not in real debate but in personal attacks on individuals; on motions of no confidence and censure motions against individual Ministers and against individual policies. The Government has made things happen and delivered policies and programs that the people of New South Wales want. The Government makes no apologies for delivering better public transport throughout New South Wales, better public transport right across the board. It has invested more funds for public transport in this State in its 6½ years than has been seen for a long time. Expenditure has increased by more than 60 per cent in real terms on the sum invested by the Labor Party in capital investment in this State.

Few people would say that the Government has not given priority to public transport. The Government has spent over $3 billion reinvesting in public transport in this State, and the benefits are there for all to see - a better rail system; better on-time running; better rolling stock, in the form of the Tangara, the Endeavour, the Xplorer and the XPT trains; the rebuilt railway stations and the infrastructure that is part of that - new concrete sleepers, retamping of the lines, the overhead wires, the video cameras, the help points that are available, the security guards on the railway stations, the video cameras in the trains, the point-to-point communication between the passenger and the driver and the guard. All of those measures have been taken, together with a number of public transport infrastructure projects that have been developed under this Government.

Page 5595

The Government has developed a new rail link proposal which it is working on right now and for which it has signed heads of agreement in respect of a new southern line; a major rail project that will transport passengers to the airport in eight minutes and to the international terminal in 10 minutes. It is on such projects that the Government will spend $600 million. They means real jobs and transport for the State. The previous Labor Government delivered the tail end over a number of years in the form of the eastern suburbs railway. The Opposition constantly talks about cross-regional links. It was in office for 12 years; this Government has been in office for 6½ years and has reinvested in rail. It has got rid of the old red rattlers and is starting to build the Parramatta to Hornsby rail link. Expenditure on new lines and infrastructure on projects the Government is committed to will amount to $1 billion.

Honourable members should consider the great projects that Labor was responsible for when in office, for example, the tunnel project. It is clear that the Opposition does not like talking about the tunnel project. When he was Minister for Planning and Environment, the Leader of the Opposition did not open his mouth once. He says that he disagreed with the tunnel project, but did we ever hear one word about it? Did he ever criticise the monorail project? Not one word. He was too busy doing his woodchip deals in a corner with Daishowa, and he allowed Laurie Brereton to do what he wanted to do. The Leader of the Opposition has the hide to come into this House and say that the Government has made a deal in respect of the underwriting of this project, but there is no comparison with the tunnel project. The Leader of the Opposition went "ching ching" as he went through the various projects. There is nothing quite like the "ching ching" that Laurie Brereton set up because that deal was a shonky deal and the Leader of the Opposition knows it was a shonky deal.

It was shonky in the sense that there were no tenders called; it was shonky in the sense that there were no expressions of interest called; it was shonky in the manner in which it was brought into this House, and every cent of it is underwritten by this Government. There is no question of proving a case against it, there is no reason at all. Every cent is underwritten. All the risk is taken by the Government. In respect of the M2 contract, by contrast, all of the risk is taken by the private sector which is a very different requirement. The M2 project is a project for which the people of the north-west have waited for a long time.

I remember the very large meetings held in the north-west at the time that I first entered Parliament. Each member who represents an electorate in the north-west has attended those large meetings - meetings of 600, 700 or 800 people. What did the people say at those meetings? "We want some roads built out to the north-west. We are tired of the congestion and delays". They talked about the Epping bridge overpass; they talked about Epping Road; they talked about the congestion right through the north-west; they talked about taking an hour and a half to get into the city because the Labor Government had failed to do anything about the traffic problems. When Labor came to office it had a grand plan to put people back on public transport. It slashed the fares, which added to the debt, and it cancelled all the freeway plans. What was the result? The result was that the number of cars on the roads increased by more than 45 per cent and the number of passengers on the rail system increased very marginally, a few per cent compared with the huge congestion on the roads.

The Opposition cancelled all the freeway plans and, if that had not happened, the Government would not have to confront the massive job that it has in respect of the roads. The Government has spent 38 per cent more on roads than the previous Government spent when in office. The people of New South Wales are the beneficiaries. On the north coast there are massive changes on the Pacific Highway - an increase of several hundred per cent. Out in the west there has been a 60 per cent increase in road funding, as the Chief Secretary, and Minister for Administrative Services would know. People in her electorate have benefited from the improvement in those roads. They are getting to work and going on excursions, going to the theatre, whatever it might be. Members of the Opposition talk in pious terms in this House about the need to have public transport, and then they get in their cars. They use the roads on a constant basis - as the honourable member for Liverpool knows, because he is a little concerned about the reduction of speed limits.

The reality is that the Government has delivered better roads. It is very unusual to have protest rallies in relation to roads but honourable members remember them in Epping. Even the members of CTAG, the Coalition for Transport Action Groups, who sit in the gallery and have been trying to spike this project from the start, know that there were progress rallies that they could never match in their wildest dreams. Their protest rallies at their height attracted about 100 people - absolute maximum. But the protesters who demonstrated in favour of building this road through the suburban streets of Epping were 5,000 strong. In addition to the 5,000 in that particular march - the middle class, the people of those suburbs who got out and showed their concern - many people in their houses were concerned and expressed their concern in letters to us. Members for electorates in the north-west know of the concerns and know of the traffic congestion.

The Labor Party is concerned for the environment, but is it favourable to the environment that one takes an hour and a half to get into the city when it could take half an hour; when one stops and starts at the traffic lights? That is not the way to go. The Government has delivered on this project. No shonky deal has been done. This project has involved major infrastructure groups such as Abigroup Limited,
Page 5596
the Macquarie Bank and Westpac. It has involved probity orders. It involved three aspects: debt, long-term debentures, and equity. It is the first publicly listed project and is regarded as a model for every infrastructure project around Australia. The project has been written up in glowing terms as the way to go. It is standard in any commercial contract to provide recourse if a project suffers a detrimental impact, as there was with the M5 project.

Dr Macdonald: It is featherbedding.

Mr BAIRD: The honourable member for Manly has spoken. I accept that he will not change the way he will vote on the motion. A choice is available in relation to infrastructure projects. We have been over it and around it, but more built, owned, operated and transferred projects - BOOT projects - are being undertaken in New South Wales than in most other places in Australia. The first option is to underwrite the project, as was done with the harbour tunnel project. That option means that everything is subsidised. Alternatively, the contract will contain a clause providing that if any major competing infrastructure is developed by government, the operators of the project are able to renegotiate to extend the life of the contract. That is standard. It is the basis of contracts in Queensland, which has toll roads, and Victoria, where they are being developed. It is the basis of overseas contracts. The project is either underwritten completely or, if government causes any major impediment, the life of the project can be extended. This project is regarded as absolutely normal.

Heaven help us all if the Leader of the Opposition ever becomes Premier of this State. This motion signals his lack of understanding of commercial matters and how projects are put together. It signals also to every major infrastructure company based in Australia not to do any deals with a future Labor government because it could not be trusted. If the Opposition was in government, it could not be trusted in relation to anything, unless it did the type of deals it did in relation to the tunnel: no tenders called, no expressions of interest. It gave the project to its mates in the middle of the night. That is the type of deal that succeeds under Labor. If one wants to look at a shonky deal, one should look at the tunnel. The Leader of the Opposition was a Cabinet member when that deal went through. He was responsible, and he now wants to compare the two deals.

The contract for the M5 has a similar provision to the contract for the M2 in relation to extending the contract. The Leader of the Opposition compared that contract with the contract for the tunnel contract. He said that the people of New South Wales were liable for $4 billion. He has the hide to lecture this House about how the Government is selling off the future of New South Wales. These are not my figures; they are the Auditor-General's figures. As the Minister for Planning and Environment at that time, the Leader of the Opposition could have spoken out and stopped the tunnel project. But he did not, because the mates in the Right of the New South Wales Labor Party stick together. This motion flows from the objective of the Opposition: get into government, get power at any price, never mind what lies are told so long at it gets there. The Leader of the Opposition, full of hubris, told the House what he thought the project involved. The reality is different. The people of the north-west have waited too long. The project provides for public transport. The previous Labor Government provided nothing for the people of the north-west. The honourable member for Blacktown talked about the impact on my electorate.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I call the honourable member for Monaro to order.

Mr BAIRD: In the 12 years the Opposition was in office, there was not much impact on my electorate. Barely a cent was spent on anything, certainly not on roads or public transport infrastructure. This project not only provides a 22-kilometre road link, it provides also for two public transport lanes that can be converted, if required, to light rail. That provision was specifically inserted in the contract. The clauses the Leader of the Opposition finds so objectionable were spelled out so that the Government could provide public transport whenever it wanted to. The contract provides only that if the operators of the tollway are able to prove that public transport has had a direct impact on the toll road, the contract can be renegotiated and extended or the toll can be increased. I would have thought honourable members opposite would encourage people to use public transport, not the reverse.

The contract provides for $100 million worth of public transport lanes. If any north-western public transport links put in by the Opposition during the 12 years it was in office could be found, we would say, "Fair enough, the Opposition put some money in". I would like to know the alternative to the project. Did the Leader of the Opposition or any members opposite say what the Opposition's plans are? Did they say, "What we plan to do is to build light rail or heavy rail up to the north-west"? They know how hard that is to deliver, as the Government has found in relation to the northern beaches. A heavy rail system to the northern beaches would cost at least $800 million or $900 million. A light rail system would cost $600 million. The honourable member for Manly knows some of the figures. This particular project is one way of providing public transport lanes quickly. It will provide a road much more quickly than any other means.

An amount of $59 million is being provided by the Government, in addition to road purchases, and $500 million will be provided by the private sector. That is $500 million that the Government does not have to find. That amount can be spent on schools, hospitals and police and all the other services provided by the Government. The Government could have
Page 5597
gone the way of the previous Government and racked up the debt, as it did with roads. It started off with a debt of $140 million when it came to government, and by the time it left the debt was $1.1 billion. This Government chose responsibly to give the private sector an opportunity. A road is being built and public transport is being provided. Twenty-eight kilometres of uninterrupted bus lanes will be provided by the combination of the bus lane from Baulkham Hills to Epping on the M2 and the bus lane for the rest of the project. It is clear that the Opposition wants to destroy the goodwill of the business community, and the goodwill of the community of the north-west that demanded this project for so long. Therefore, it has decided to move a motion of no confidence.

I am happy to compare my record on transport and roads with that of my predecessor. There is no doubt that the previous 12 years of Labor Government was a do-nothing era, except for the former member for Heffron, the previous Minister for road signs, Laurie Brereton. He certainly did many things. He transferred about $1.6 billion worth of road funds into Darling Harbour, and honourable members opposite all know about that. Laurie Brereton put up many signs but he allowed public transport to rot and decay. I refer also to the monorail, weaving in and out around the streets of Sydney. That was a great vision and a great plan! We hear about the environmental credentials of the Opposition. The monorail is a monument to the environmental non-credentials of the Opposition. It is an environmental disaster weaving through the streets of Sydney, brought to the citizens of Sydney by Laurie. He is the man who is doing such a great job in running the Federal Airports Corporation, the Civil Aviation Authority and the third runway and protecting the people of Sydney against noise! And it was the New South Wales Right, the Opposition's mates, who provided this.

This contract provides flexibility. The Government can build public transport if it wants to. If the case can be proved that public transport is impacting on toll receipts, the contractors will be paid up to the base rate, which are the original projections - nothing more, nothing less. This contract is straight forward and normal. It has been prepared by well-known companies and the probity issue has been overseen. This is a frivolous motion moved by the discredited Leader of the Opposition. He likes to refer to people seeking jobs, but it is sad that after 25 March no-one will employ him. He is jealous that no-one will make him a job offer; and who would want to? The credentials of the Leader of the Opposition in the environment portfolio are sad and sorry. He was good on woodchipping but he was absolutely silent on the monorail and the tunnel, and that is a demonstration of the hypocrisy of the Leader of the Opposition on this issue.

The Government is delivering the project. The matter can be delayed but the people of the north-west will be deprived of a new major road link and public transport link. The Government and its members are supportive of this project. This motion shows the desperation of the Leader of the Opposition. He was embarrassed by what happened with the State Bank yesterday. He did not appear in the Chamber, he did not speak, and now he is simply trying to push another issue. Public transport is a success for the Government; it is proud of its record and deserves the support of the House. The Government discusses every aspect of the potential for public transport. An integrated transport plan has been clearly set out in the documents and the Government has developed such a plan. To my knowledge the former Labor Government never had such a plan. Laurie Brereton produced Roads 2000 but Labor did not have any integration.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I call the honourable member for Monaro to order for the second time.

Mr BAIRD: That was because Laurie did not like competition. He liked the project to be only a roads project. The concept of public transport and roads coming together has never been seen before. This brings those two projects together in a balanced program, one that the people of this State demand and expect the Government to supply. Each day 85 per cent of people travel to work by roads. The Government has been elected by the people of New South Wales and is delivering a major new function. The Opposition is against the project, as it was against the casino, Walsh Bay wharves, the M4 and M5 projects, Motorway Pacific, RiverCats, the tilt train and any other project the Government has sought to implement. The Government has shown that it is determined to press ahead with its program. It has a proud record and deserves the support and congratulations of the House, rather than the reverse.

Mr CARR (Maroubra - Leader of the Opposition) [11.35], in reply: After seven years the Government has only one solution to Sydney's transport plan: tollways. And not only tollways but tollways that exclude a public transport alternative ever being provided for the next 45 years. That is the essence of it; that is the nub of it. When I moved the motion I dispensed with the weak defences presented by the Minister. The Minister in his defence has been able to present nothing in the hours of debate since then that alters the landscape of this discussion. There it sits, the agreement that on page 26 states:

The traffic projections for the M2 Motorway assume that it will be the primary transport link to north western Sydney.

It goes on to state that any alteration in that arrangement means renegotiation. Renegotiation means one thing: it means the State Government paying compensation, and that is the essence of it. The Government is required - and the letter from Blake Dawson Waldron does not contradict it - to pay compensation if it is audacious enough at any time in the life of four or five governments to contemplate a public transport link to the medium-term growth
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region of Sydney. This is a huge environmental and planning issue. This debate will be returned to by historians and archivists trying to construct why Sydney made the kind of mistake that Los Angeles made in the 1940s, when it wiped out public transport? That is the serious and historic importance of this issue. It is similar to Los Angeles blotting out public transport in the 1940s and early 1950s. It has that kind of significance. I refer to the ridiculous letter from Blake Dawson Waldron, which states:

We confirm that, in our view, the M2 Motorway Project Deed does not preclude the government of the day from:

•providing public transport to the northwest regions of Sydney; or

•upgrading Epping Road or any other roads to the northwest regions of Sydney.

The letter neglects to mention that compensation will have to be paid to the private investors if that public transport or road upgrading is contemplated by the Government. What government in the future is going to be able to fudge it sensibly for public transport if that price tag, that price penalty, is attached to it? How will any future government realistically afford to build public transport when the cost of that public transport will be inflated by possibly hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation to be paid to the private investors of the M2? It is an extraordinary decision to insert a financial disincentive to any future government, for the life of at least 12 Parliaments, if it contemplates investing in public transport or the upgrading of toll-free roads in the north-west. After seven years, tollways and more tollways is the Government's only transport solution. The Government, at the point of its defeat, has the audacity to insert into the agreement a financial disincentive that is against the interests of any community that in the future contemplates a departure from the tollway option.

There can be no confidence in a Minister who is prepared to sign away the future of Sydney, and the future health of the city and its people for the sake of 21 kilometres of asphalt and a handful of private investors.

I remind members of the most exquisite moment in this debate. When I made allegations about the light rail line, the Minister asserted that the rail lines would run down the edge of the road. It required the honourable member for Eastwood to hurtle himself across the Chamber to tell the Minister, "It is in the middle, Minister; it is in the middle". Sadly for the Minister and the honourable member for Eastwood, courtesy of the microphones in the Chamber, that intervention in the debate by the honourable member for Eastwood was heard by everyone in this House.

Mr HATTON (South Coast) [11.43]: In accordance with Standing Order 183 I move:

That the Question be divided to provide for two separate questions to be put on paragraph (1) and paragraphs (2), (3) and (4) of the amendment of the Member for Manly.

Question put.

The House divided.

Ms Allan Mr McManus
Mr Amery Mr Markham
Mr Anderson Mr Martin
Mr A. S. Aquilina Ms Meagher
Mr J. J. Aquilina Mr Mills
Mr Bowman Ms Moore
Mr Carr Mr Moss
Mr Clough Mr J. H. Murray
Mr Crittenden Mr Nagle
Mr Face Mr Neilly
Mr Gaudry Ms Nori
Mr Gibson Mr E. T. Page
Mrs Grusovin Mr Price
Mr Harrison Dr Refshauge
Ms Harrison Mr Rogan
Mr Hatton Mr Rumble
Mr Hunter Mr Scully
Mr Iemma Mr Sullivan
Mr Irwin Mr Thompson
Mr Knight Mr Whelan
Mr Knowles Mr Yeadon
Mr Langton Tellers,
Mrs Lo Po' Mr Beckroge
Dr Macdonald Mr Davoren

Mr Armstrong Mr Merton
Mr Baird Mr Morris
Mr Beck Mr W. T. J. Murray
Mr Blackmore Mr O'Doherty
Mr Causley Mr D. L. Page
Mr Chappell Mr Peacocke
Mrs Chikarovski Mr Phillips
Mr Cochran Mr Photios
Mrs Cohen Mr Richardson
Mr Collins Mr Rixon
Mr Cruickshank Mr Schipp
Mr Downy Mr Schultz
Mr Fahey Mrs Skinner
Mr Fraser Mr Small
Mr Glachan Mr Smith
Mr Griffiths Mr Tink
Mr Hartcher Mr Turner
Mr Hazzard Mr West
Mr Humpherson Mr Zammit
Dr Kernohan
Mr Kinross Tellers,
Mr Longley Mr Jeffery
Ms Machin Mr Kerr

Mr Doyle Mr Debnam
Mr McBride Mr Petch
Mr Shedden Mr Souris

Question so resolved in the affirmative.

Motion that the question be divided agreed to.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The first question is, That paragraph (1) of the amendment be agreed to. All in favour say "Aye", and to the contrary "No". The noes have it.

Mr Whelan: Division!

Mr SPEAKER: Order! When the Chair put the question, the Opposition was silent. Paragraph (1) of the motion is lost.

Page 5599

Paragraph (1) of the amendment negatived.

Question - That paragraphs (2), (3) and (4) of the amendment be agreed to - put.

The House divided.

Ms Allan Mr McManus
Mr Amery Mr Markham
Mr Anderson Mr Martin
Mr A. S. Aquilina Ms Meagher
Mr J. J. Aquilina Mr Mills
Mr Bowman Ms Moore
Mr Carr Mr Moss
Mr Clough Mr J. H. Murray
Mr Crittenden Mr Nagle
Mr Face Mr Neilly
Mr Gaudry Ms Nori
Mr Gibson Mr E. T. Page
Mrs Grusovin Mr Price
Mr Harrison Dr Refshauge
Ms Harrison Mr Rogan
Mr Hatton Mr Rumble
Mr Hunter Mr Scully
Mr Iemma Mr Sullivan
Mr Irwin Mr Thompson
Mr Knight Mr Whelan
Mr Knowles Mr Yeadon
Mr Langton Tellers,
Mrs Lo Po' Mr Beckroge
Dr Macdonald Mr Davoren

Mr Armstrong Mr Merton
Mr Baird Mr Morris
Mr Beck Mr W. T. J. Murray
Mr Blackmore Mr O'Doherty
Mr Causley Mr D. L. Page
Mr Chappell Mr Peacocke
Mrs Chikarovski Mr Phillips
Mr Cochran Mr Photios
Mrs Cohen Mr Richardson
Mr Collins Mr Rixon
Mr Cruickshank Mr Schipp
Mr Downy Mr Schultz
Mr Fahey Mrs Skinner
Mr Fraser Mr Small
Mr Glachan Mr Smith
Mr Griffiths Mr Tink
Mr Hartcher Mr Turner
Mr Hazzard Mr West
Mr Humpherson Mr Windsor
Dr Kernohan Mr Zammit
Mr Kinross Tellers,
Mr Longley Mr Jeffery
Ms Machin Mr Kerr

Mr Doyle Mr Debnam
Mr McBride Mr Petch
Mr Shedden Mr Souris

Question so resolved in the affirmative.

Paragraphs (2), (3) and (4) of the amendment agreed to.

Mr SPEAKER: The question now is, That the motion as amended be agreed to.

Motion by Mr Langton, pursuant to Standing Order 183, agreed to:

That the Question be divided to provide for two separate questions to be put on paragraph (1) and paragraphs (2), (3) and (4) of the amended motion of the Leader of the Opposition.

Question - That paragraph (1) of the motion as amended be agreed to - put.

The House divided.

Ms Allan Mr Markham
Mr Amery Mr Martin
Mr Anderson Ms Meagher
Mr A. S. Aquilina Mr Mills
Mr J. J. Aquilina Mr Moss
Mr Bowman Mr J. H. Murray
Mr Carr Mr Nagle
Mr Clough Mr Neilly
Mr Crittenden Ms Nori
Mr Face Mr E. T. Page
Mr Gaudry Mr Price
Mr Gibson Dr Refshauge
Mrs Grusovin Mr Rogan
Mr Harrison Mr Rumble
Ms Harrison Mr Scully
Mr Hunter Mr Sullivan
Mr Iemma Mr Thompson
Mr Irwin Mr Whelan
Mr Knight Mr Yeadon
Mr Knowles
Mr Langton Tellers,
Mrs Lo Po' Mr Beckroge
Mr McManus Mr Davoren

Mr Armstrong Mr Merton
Mr Baird Ms Moore
Mr Beck Mr Morris
Mr Blackmore Mr W. T. J. Murray
Mr Causley Mr O'Doherty
Mr Chappell Mr D. L. Page
Mrs Chikarovski Mr Peacocke
Mr Cochran Mr Phillips
Mrs Cohen Mr Photios
Mr Collins Mr Richardson
Mr Cruickshank Mr Rixon
Mr Downy Mr Schipp
Mr Fahey Mr Schultz
Mr Fraser Mrs Skinner
Mr Glachan Mr Small
Mr Griffiths Mr Smith
Mr Hartcher Mr Tink
Mr Hatton Mr Turner
Mr Hazzard Mr West
Mr Humpherson Mr Windsor
Dr Kernohan Mr Zammit
Mr Kinross
Mr Longley Tellers,
Dr Macdonald Mr Jeffery
Ms Machin Mr Kerr

Page 5600

Mr Doyle Mr Debnam
Mr McBride Mr Petch
Mr Shedden Mr Souris

Question so resolved in the negative.

Paragraph (1) of the motion as amended negatived.

Question - That paragraphs (2), (3) and (4) of the motion as amended be agreed to - put.

The House divided.

Ms Allan Mr McManus
Mr Amery Mr Markham
Mr Anderson Mr Martin
Mr A. S. Aquilina Ms Meagher
Mr J. J. Aquilina Mr Mills
Mr Bowman Ms Moore
Mr Carr Mr Moss
Mr Clough Mr J. H. Murray
Mr Crittenden Mr Nagle
Mr Face Mr Neilly
Mr Gaudry Ms Nori
Mr Gibson Mr E. T. Page
Mrs Grusovin Mr Price
Mr Harrison Dr Refshauge
Ms Harrison Mr Rogan
Mr Hatton Mr Rumble
Mr Hunter Mr Scully
Mr Iemma Mr Sullivan
Mr Irwin Mr Thompson
Mr Knight Mr Whelan
Mr Knowles Mr Yeadon
Mr Langton Tellers,
Mrs Lo Po' Mr Beckroge
Dr Macdonald Mr Davoren
Mr Armstrong Mr Merton
Mr Baird Mr Morris
Mr Beck Mr W. T. J. Murray
Mr Blackmore Mr O'Doherty
Mr Causley Mr D. L. Page
Mr Chappell Mr Peacocke
Mrs Chikarovski Mr Phillips
Mr Cochran Mr Photios
Mrs Cohen Mr Richardson
Mr Collins Mr Rixon
Mr Cruickshank Mr Schipp
Mr Downy Mr Schultz
Mr Fahey Mrs Skinner
Mr Fraser Mr Small
Mr Glachan Mr Smith
Mr Griffiths Mr Tink
Mr Hartcher Mr Turner
Mr Hazzard Mr West
Mr Humpherson Mr Windsor
Dr Kernohan Mr Zammit
Mr Kinross Tellers,
Mr Longley Mr Jeffery
Ms Machin Mr Kerr

Mr Doyle Mr Debnam
Mr McBride Mr Petch
Mr Shedden Mr Souris

Question so resolved in the affirmative.

Paragraphs (2), (3) and (4) of the motion as amended agreed to.

Motion as amended agreed to.