HANSARD EXTRACT
| Statements
by Members: Werriwa Electorate: Roads |
| 22 March 2007 |
Mr HAYES
(Werriwa) (9.36 a.m.)—Today I
want to raise an issue of great concern to the residents of
Ingleburn, Macquarie Fields, Glenfield, Minto and other suburbs: the
state of the crossing at the Cambridge Avenue bridge in Glenfield.
The crossing at Glenfield at Cambridge Avenue is not really a
bridge; it is a crossing over a causeway. It was constructed by the
Defence Force in the 1940s so that they could access the Ingleburn
railway station from their Moorebank and Holsworthy facilities. In
1948 the causeway was opened to the public.
The causeway provides an essential transport link to many of the
residents of the south-west of
Sydney.
Anyone familiar with that region would know that a great number of
the residents travel outside the area each day to work and many
travel across the
Cambridge Avenue bridge. The population growth over the last few
decades has increased the use of the bridge and has highlighted some
of its inherent safety problems.
I have had my own near miss with the bridge when a car came a little
too close one morning when I was out running, forcing me to jump
from the bridge into the river. This near miss is not an isolated
incident and is, sadly, not the worst. I am aware of two fatalities
that have occurred in the area, sadly, one as recently as last year
when a firefighter, Steven Richardson, was killed in a head-on
collision on his way to a fire.
During my by-election the state of the causeway and the inherent
dangers were raised with me regularly. At the time I received advice
from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence that a
transport plan was being prepared and that, once commissioned, the
plan would take six to nine months to complete. That was back in
April 2005. A year after, the Campbelltown City Council received an
almost identically worded letter from the Commonwealth. So in 12
months not only had the government not made any progress in finding
a solution; it could not even be bothered updating its letter of
response.
In June 2006 the parliamentary secretary informed me that the report
on the proposed Moorebank freight hub was expected to be completed
later that year. He also indicated that the report would outline the
requirement for funding and upgrading of the transport
infrastructure. I was still awaiting this report in February this
year when another storm event occurred, with flooding closing the
bridge to traffic, creating local chaos and shifting the traffic
burden to the M5. I immediately wrote to the Minister for Defence to
find out the status of the report, but to date I have not received
an acknowledgement, let alone an answer to that correspondence. Like
me, many local residents, including Barry Jarrett and Melissa
Wellfare, continue to wait for pretty simple answers to some simple
questions. Minister, what have you got to hide? (Time expired)
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