Action group takes its toll on roads lobby event

By Wendy Bacon

Like all industries, the roads industry holds corporate events to network and celebrate achievements. Normally roads lobby events are smooth affairs – talk, good food and a chance to chat about new public contracts that keep profits churning.

But this year, it’s become increasingly difficult for the lobby to hold its corporate events in peace. As hundreds of road engineers and builders, transport bureaucrats and corporate marketers headed into Sydney Town hall for their big Roads Australia awards night on Monday May 4, they were met by a toll gate constructed especially for them by the WestConnex Action Group. As the protesters’ street theatre did not entirely block the entrance, most predictably took the ‘rat run’ to avoid the toll which is precisely what many drivers are predicted to do if the 33 kilometre WestConnex motorway is constructed. Some even found themselves issued with $15,000,000 penalty notices for wasting public funds on the WestConnex project.

Some fazed interstate guests said they weren’t involved with WestConnex. Others were cynical, one telling City Hub‘s reporter that his company would take any contract whether the project was beneficial or not because the company’s survival depends on a flow of public funds. He probably spoke for many. Nevertheless it was not the celebratory atmosphere expected at the grand entrance of the year’s gala dinner.

This lighthearted protest by residents from St Peters, Newtown, Stanmore and Ashfield followed an earlier event when protesters interrupted a corporate lunch at which the WestConnex Delivery Authority (WDA) CEO Dennis Cliche addressed a similar crowd.

As reported later by Fairfax Media, Mr Cliche who ran private Yarra Trams and the East Link toll road in Melbourne before he joined WDA spent part of his speech complaining about the ‘inequitable debate’, which was making it difficult to communicate the case for the WestConnex. He then proceeded to denigrate the movement against WestConnex, which includes residents in many parts of Sydney including Homebush, Beverly Hills, Concord and the inner west.

“The people who are making the most noise are those who already have the ability to jump in their car [and] drive wherever they want. They’ve got great public transport opportunities. They are a demographic that, generally speaking, is wealthier and there is this attitude of ‘I love my community don’t mess it up’,” Mr Cliche said.

“But they’re not living in the mortgage belt. They don’t have kids who are to some extent excluded socially from the opportunities that some people have,” he said.

“It’s not right for the people in an inner-city community to come in and enjoy their lifestyle and try and apply that to everybody else. And I think that’s exactly what we are seeing.”

A spokesperson for the WestConnex Action Group Pauline Lockie said her house will be compulsorily acquired by WDA if the toll road goes ahead.

She told City Hub yesterday that the “us-vs-them” tactics Mr Cliche and Duncan Gay used showed they were becoming desperate against WestConnex’s rising opposition.

“Transport and urban planning experts, progressive councils and well-informed members of the community, have long opposed WestConnex. Now we’re seeing business leaders such as Dr Tim Williams and the Committee for Sydney… joining the call for more transparency and a rethink – before it’s too late for our city,” she said.

Ms Lockie was among hundreds of resident activists, planners and students who attended a lecture by Dr Tim Williams, an honorary associate professor at Sydney University in late April. Dr Williams, also CEO of the business group the Committee of Sydney drew on his international UK transport experience to slam Sydney’s transport planning and call on the NSW Baird government to release the business case for big road projects.

He specifically criticised Mr Cliche’s attack on residents who oppose the WestConnex as being misguided.

In his PowerPoint presentation, Mr Williams directly quoted from Cliche’s Roads Australia speech and described it as a “terrible way to have a civic dialogue about transport in our city… Trying to set one part of the community against another, trying to say that the inner west community is trying to stop the good people of western Sydney getting access to something,” Williams said

Mr Willams called for a more livable Greater Sydney by developing fast public transport connections between centres and more walkable environments across the city. He argued that NSW transport planning has been dominated by the Roads and Maritime Services for too long and that public transport should be prioritised above motorways that have been abandoned by other major cities.

It’s been a bad two weeks for the WDA as the City of Sydney came out with its second independent report showing that if WestConnex goes ahead, traffic on the key alternative route Parramatta Road will be even worse in the future than now.

Despite the increasing expressions of concerns from community groups, councils professional and academic planners and business, the WDA is determinedly pressing ahead as fast as it can with two preliminary stages – the expansion of the existing M5 and interchange at Beverly Hills in Sydney’s south west and the M4 widening that will affect Homebush, Silverwater and Auburn. Residents in these areas have made submissions opposing the Westconnex but many others also remain unaware of works that could soon disrupt their lives in a major way.

The WDA is also moving forward in removing public park lands for construction works in Concord and Strathfield and Beverly Hills in further stages of the project. It holds information sessions, some of which are during business hours when most residents are at work, on minor aspects of the project.

Residents say that they find this frustrating because they cannot engage with the fundamentals of the project. City Hub has attended some of these sessions and visited several planned construction sites and will report on these investigations in our next issue.

Wendy Bacon has been a resident of inner Sydney for half a century and has attended anti-WestConnex protests.