Prime Minister hits Western Sydney battleground
Prime Minister Julia Gillard started her week in the crucial federal election territory of Western Sydney with a series of promises aimed at repairing the Government's reputation there.
Transcript
LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Any remaining doubts that Australia's on election footing have disintegrated as Prime Minister Julia Gillard embarks on her roadshow to win back the voters of Western Sydney.
She's on a mission to sandbag up to a dozen Sydney seats, which, if they fall in the September election, will bring down her government.
But not everyone's prepared to help in her Western Sydney blitz. The New South Wales Coalition government has knocked back a billion-dollar offer from the Commonwealth to help it link two Sydney motorways.
Political editor Chris Uhlmann has been following the Prime Minister in Western Sydney.
CHRIS UHLMANN, REPORTER: It looked like an election campaign launch and sounded like a campaign launch. But going by the Prime Minister's timetable for this year, this is what governing looks like.
Julia Gillard arrived in Western Sydney on Sunday evening to a rapturous reception from 1,000 of Labor's faithful. And to marry her life story to that of the millions in Sydney's western suburban sprawl.
JULIA GILLARD, PRIME MINISTER: I understand first hand in my role as a member of Parliament in Melbourne's west a region's yearning for recognition and respect.
CHRIS UHLMANN: The suburb's west of the Anzac Bridge were once Labor's heartland, but the party was decimated at the 2011 state election and a bevy of federal members fear that fate awaits them in September.
SAM DASTYARI, GENERAL SECRETARY, NSW LABOR: We all know we're in a difficult fight right now and there are people lining up to kick us. And we can be honest with each other enough to say that sometimes some of those kicks are deserved.
CHRIS UHLMANN: But the damage goes beyond bruising; it's bone deep, and an older generation of true believers laments that recent high-profile scandals have squandered 122 years of history.
STEPHEN LOOSLEY, FORMER ALP NATIONAL SECRETARY: The brand is damaged, there's no question about that, state and federal. And the horror story that's overwhelmed the party out of the ICAC and to an extent the Craig Thompson affair has really been very damaging indeed. And while people still distinguish to an extent between state and federal elections and state and federal parties, there's no doubt that the federal ALP has copped a lot of the backwash from these matters.
CHRIS UHLMANN: With up to a dozen seats under threat in the west, the Prime Minister could lose government here, no matter what happens in the rest of Australia, so she's kicked off a five-day sandbagging tour. And, to try and grab voter attention, she's weighing into areas that are usually left to state governments.
JULIA GILLARD: The grind of long daily commutes on infrastructure that's barely coping.
CHRIS UHLMANN: The people of Western Sydney have the longest average commuting times in Australia, spending more than an hour a day getting to and from work. But that's just one in a long list of irritants including the cost of living, job security, and in some suburbs, gun crime.
CHRISTOPHER BROWN, PARRAMATTA PARTNERSHIP FORUM: People should ask themselves, if there was the level of gun crime in the eastern suburbs or in the Lower North Shore as there's been in Western Sydney in the past two years, do you think that we wouldn't see police in every street? Do you think we wouldn't see federal-state taskforces clamping down? Where not gonna let the people of Western Sydney live in fear about the thugs who want to take over organised crime. How 'bout we see some public money going into make these streets as safe as the streets of Mosman are?
CHRIS UHLMANN: The Prime Minister arrived in Sydney on Sunday morning with the head of Customs and the Australian Federal Police in tow to announce $64 million over four years for a national anti-gang taskforce.
JULIA GILLARD: New measures to tackle serious and organised crime. New measures to get the guns and gangs off our streets.
CHRIS UHLMANN: For the next five nights, the Prime Minister will call the Rooty Hill Novatel home.
I spent eight years in the 1980s living and working in the western suburbs of Sydney. Two of those I was a security guard and one of the jobs was guarding the Rooty Hill RSL car park. It's changed a lot since then, but I think it's fair to say it's never been like this.
The prime ministerial sleep out has drawn the Opposition Leader's election caravan west.
KARL STEFANOVIC, CHANNEL NINE TODAY PRESENTER: Tony, it's on.
TONY ABBOTT, OPPOSITION LEADER: Look, whenever it happens, the Coalition is ready and we have a plan for Western Sydney: we scrap the carbon tax, we build the WestConnex, we stop the boats and we stop the guns.
CHRIS UHLMANN: With Tony Abbott saying he won't go ahead with some Labor programs tied to the mining and carbon taxes, Julia Gillard's warning that a change of government will mean a cut to entitlements.
JULIA GILLARD: I think he's gonna meet a lot of people who say to him, "Actually, that schoolkids bonus money does help me, Tony. It helps me put shoes on the kids' feet and pay for their uniform. And that tax cut did help me, Tony. And why do you want to take those things away from me and my family?"
CHRIS UHLMANN: And there is a sense that the Coalition might be counting seats before they've fallen.
TONY ABBOTT: This is now the new Liberal heartland. Because Labor has neglected it for so long, I think this really is the new Liberal heartland and I want to keep it that way.
CHRIS UHLMANN: Early morning media commitments over, the Prime Minister moved on to an organisation that provides services to the disabled and shifted the conversation to one of the Government's strengths: a promise to fund a national disability insurance scheme.
In 17 weeks' time, Ability Options will take part in a national disability insurance scheme trial in the Hunter. The way that its funding works now is that it gets 50 per cent from the state and 50 per cent from the Commonwealth. The money's paid in a block and that money flows down to its clients. Under the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the money will flow to people and they'll be able to purchase services from places like this.
STEPHEN GOODE, DIRECTOR, ABILITY OPTIONS: If they don't like the service I'm providing, or I'm not giving them the services that they want, they will walk. They will take the funding with them and find somebody else.
CHRIS UHLMANN: Disability insurance has bi-partisan support, but although the trial starts this year, not all states have agreed to it, no-one has said how it will be funded and at best a national scheme won't begin for at least five years.
By mid-morning there was a pledge to spend a billion dollars to finish Sydney's WestConnex motorway.
JULIA GILLARD: I'll make a funding offer on the day I see an appropriate plan, but we are very clear about our conditions for an appropriate plan. It's not good enough to invest billions of dollars and not ease people's journeys all the way into the city.
CHRIS UHLMANN: The plan comes with demands of the state, that the project has to link to the city and Port Botany and not include a tollway. The NSW Premier says that would see its costs blowout by at least $5 billion.
BARRY O'FARRELL, NSW PREMIER: Any dollars for infrastructure in Sydney's west is clearly going to be welcome, but coming at five minutes to midnight on the eve of a federal election campaign when it hasn't been delivered in the past five years does make people a bit sceptical.
CHRIS UHLMANN: So far this tour hasn't included any high-risk events like walking through a shopping centre, but perhaps that lies ahead, and this afternoon, cabinet did go west to add a touch of governing to the campaigning. But, for this group, the question all will have weighed is: are people listening?
LEIGH SALES: Political editor and former security guard Chris Uhlmann there in Western Sydney.
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