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The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has given a media address near a busy roadway in western Sydney, in the midst of her five-day tour of the region. Ms Gillard has said she sympathises with residents about the infrastructure problems in the area, and announced that her Federal Government is prepared to make a $1 billion down-payment on a key motorway into the city. But there are conditions attached.
Sabra Lane
Source: The World Today | Duration: 4min 37sec
Topics: alp, federal-government, federal-elections, nsw, australia
ELEANOR HALL: But we begin today in western Sydney, where the Prime Minister is in the midst of her five-day tour of the region and has just given a media address near a busy roadway.
Julia Gillard said she sympathised with residents about the infrastructure problems in the area and announced that her government is prepared to make a $1 billion down-payment on a key motorway into the city.
But there are conditions attached.
Joining us now is chief political correspondent Sabra Lane, who's travelling with the Prime Minister. Sabra, describe for us firstly where the PM was as she made this announcement?
SABRA LANE: Well the Prime Minister made this announcement right next to the M7, which is a motorway out in Sydney's west, and it was right near the junction actually of the M4. So it was possibly one of the noisiest locations in Sydney to actually hold the news announcement.
But she basically said that her government was prepared to put $1 billion on the table to build what is known in Sydney at the missing M4 link. The M4 is a motorway from Sydney's west. It stops at Strathfield, so it's about at my guess about 10 kilometres out from the CBD of Sydney.
The O'Farrell Government has plan to link up the M4 and another motorway, the M5, but as part of their plan they don't have a link going to the city. So the Prime Minister says as a condition of her deal, the $1 billion is that they do build a tunnel link to the city but also that a freight link also be constructed to Port Botany to make sure that heavy freight is gotten off those busy motorways as well.
And the other third condition to all of that is that the existing motorways that are free must remain toll free. Now this very much fits in with the Prime Minister's narrative out here in western Sydney.
She says that better roads are needed to help with the lives of families out here and to ease up congestion.
Let's hear how she announced the $1 billion announcement.
JULIA GILLARD: I'm being very practical here. In order to make a difference for the people who get in their cars every morning and try and get to Sydney's CBD for work, they need a better way of getting there.
Not getting, you know, part of the way there, they need a better way of getting to the city - that's what I want to see for those people doing those long commutes currently. I do not have a plan before me that does that.
ELEANOR HALL: That's the Prime Minister Julia Gillard outside, as you said Sabra, that busy motorway there. Is she still insisting that this is governing, not campaigning?
SABRA LANE: Yes, the Prime Minister says that this is a good opportunity for her to get out and about and talk to people. Before she made this announcement, she visited another business in the west, a business that trains disabled people and helps place them in work situations.
So she said it was a good opportunity to talk to that business and the people who are training the clients, in particular, about the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which the Government will roll out launch sites shortly in 17 weeks.
But you know, it's hard Eleanor not to see it anything but the backdrop with the M7, she was surrounded by quite a few of her ministers - Chris Bowen, Anthony Albanese, also David Bradbury, a local member, and also some other western Sydney MPs.
So she had a bevvy of MPs and ministers when she made this announcement.
ELEANOR HALL: And $1 billion is significant. Did she say how this motorway will be funded?
SABRA LANE: Well $1 billion is significant, but it's nowhere near the cost. At the moment, the proposal the Barry O'Farrell Government has put to the Federal Government - it's looking for funding for it already. It's said that the cost could be in total somewhere between $10 billion and $13 billion.
But the Federal Government says it has a huge problem with the plan that has been put by Barry O'Farrell, because they say that it just doesn't make sense to put all this money into this infrastructure and not build a link to the CBD - that it's crazy.
The Prime Minister was asked if she was playing a game of bluff with Barry O'Farrell. Let's hear a response.
JULIA GILLARD: I don't accept Premier O'Farrell's analysis that there is no need for a second airport and that the current airport can cope with all future traffic. I don't accept that. We've been involved in a joint study with New South Wales which unsurprisingly said that there was a need for a second airport.
We, since that time, have been involved in studying the site at Wilton and that is our focus and we are still working on all of the assessments to do with the Wilton site.
ELEANOR HALL: That's the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, in western Sydney and our chief political correspondent Sabra Lane travelling with her.
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