City Hub reporter and local activist, WENDY BACON, spoke at a Westconnex forum in Erskineville.The following is an edited transcript of her speech.
I will begin by acknowledging that I am wearing a few hats tonight.
I’ve lived in this neighbourhood for near 30 years. I’m a journalist and an activist who has been involved in Friends of Erskineville since its beginnings and also the Westconnex Action Group for about a year. I’m also an editor of the People’s EIS, an initiative which aims to empower the community by sharing information and breaking through the impenetrable 8000 page Westconnex EIS.
To be honest, I was not well informed about Westconnex until the announcement in 2014 that a massive interchange would carve up the nearby community in St Peters, spewing thousands of extra trucks and cars onto our local roads. I knew the NSW LNP government had grafted Westconnex onto its transport plans as a result of reports heavily influenced by interests connected to the road building and property lobbies. I knew that the philosophy driving plans for a 33 kilometre system of toll ways has long been rejected by many contemporary urban planners. Indeed, I was aware of the history of motorway planning from the early seventies when I was involved with the campaign to stop an expressway knocking over last swathes of Glebe, a plan stopped by the Wran Labor government about 40 years ago. I was aware too of the continual failures of NSW governments to provide adequate public transport, particularly for Sydney’s Western suburbs.
A year later, I can say that I know a lot about Westconnex, but there’s a lot I don’t know because of secrecy. Last year, Westconnex was turned into a private company called Sydney Motorway Company (SMC). Although it is still publicly owned, this was a tactical move by the Baird government to take Westconnex outside the NSW freedom of information law, known as GIPA (Government Information Public Access) which means that its contracts no long have to be released publicly; and also despite millions of public funds being spent on PR, important information continually has to be prized out of Westconnex. There are so many uncertainties and impenetrable reports. For example, Westconnex buries much of the important information in its 8000 page New M5 EIS deep technical appendices, each of which is hundreds of pages.
There are many reasons why our community should fight tooth and nail to stop the Westconnex. I will just cover several major ones.
The first is that the project won’t achieve its objectives. It won’t solve traffic congestion – in fact, it will create it. Westconnex would be a tragic waste of Federal and State funds that should be spent on public transport, innovative ways to manage traffic better and work places, and build more schools and health care facilities where they are needed. This is not my view – it is the view of numerous Australian and international experts around the world – I won’t list them here. If you want to read more about how Westconnex fails its objectives, I would recommend transport researcher Chris Standen’s submissions which are published on the People’s New M5 EIS. (m5eis.org).
What is perhaps most frightening about the EIS process is that Westconnex’s so called professional experts who are working on the EIS for the M4 East do not seem to even acknowledge, let alone engage with a whole body of work that critiques their EIS. They ignore powerful arguments raised by independent consultants hired by Council and in 4800 submissions to the M4 EIS of which over 99.9 rejected the project. Many of these submissions were detailed and well researched. None of them were found to have any weight. Instead the Response to Submissions reports just repeats the original arguments. Will the NSW Planning Department condone this – we will see soon.
Whether it is claims about travel time savings, the demolition of the habitat of the endangered Green and Golden Bell Frog at Arnciiffe, the failure to model any noise impacts above 2 floors, the failure to respond adequately the National Trust, which has objected to knocking down scores of heritage buildings in Haberfield to hot spots where there will be rising levels of potentially deadly fine particulate pollution, the Westconnex answer to critics is always the same. It either doesn’t matter or at least even if it does, it’s not significant.
This brings me to my second major point. This planning process is so deeply corrupted that we need to say NO. The Baird government is treating our communities with huge arrogance – not just in the Inner West but also in the south West and western Sydney and even the eastern suburbs where community concern about the need for light rail to involve the destruction of hundreds of old tress is being ruthlessly swept aside. We need to demand that the community be included in planning. When private interests capture planning processes, there is no democracy.
Just a few facts:
The Westconnex was imposed on the new LNP government’s transport planning by Infrastructure NSW that was heavily stacked by developers. It was also imposed on the Strategic Metropolitan Plan that was adopted by NSW Planning – the very body that is now supposed to be assessing the current M4 East and M5 projects.
AECOM which the massive New York based engineering company was involved from the start in first flawed Westconnex business plan that was subsequently torn apart by the NSW Auditor General. AECOM was then hired to liaise with industry for the design of the New M5. It has been granted more contracts in the project including for the Stage 3 tunnel between the M4 and M5, about which the public has been told almost nothing despite the fact it will have even more impacts on Newtown, Glebe and Annandale. It then was paid more than $15 million to do both for the M4 East and New M5. Despite this general public funding, the EIS for both M4 East and New M5 have no independence and are presented in the most impenetrable way that deliberately flouts NSW government policies designed to enhance access to information.
The standard of this New M5 EIS is very low. For example, there is supposed to be a Social and Economic Impact study. Unlike to the M4 East there is no separate Economic Study at all. There was no direct consultation with inner West businesses. This study is little more than a ‘cut and paste’ of basic data. In its list of social infrastructure, Erskineville School and other schools are left out altogether while Newtown that is about the same distance from the project is included. Worst of all, there is almost no recognition of the social and psychological impact on hundreds of people who are losing their homes.
Westconnex have their own traffic model but experts who want to test the assumptions on which it is based are not allowed to have a copy of the model.
What we do know is there has been no modeling at all beyond two intersections beyond the project. Of course we all know that thousands of extra cars will have to go somewhere but this information is not included.
I analysed the information about the intersections closed to the end of the St Peters Interchange and found that 11 intersections in the morning peak in 2021 and 2031 will be the same or worse than they are now. Where will this traffic go? Of course it will end up in Mitchell, Erskineville, King and other roads.
Euston Road will have to be widened to take the thousands of extra cars taking 14,000 square metres of Sydney Park. (This suddenly increased from about 8000 square metres at about the time the EIS was submitted.) The plan is to take the road to within 2 metres of people’s bedrooms in Euston Rd, Alexandria. It’s hard to believe given what is know about the levels of air pollution near busy surface roads that any planning authority would countenance this transport plan.
My third point is – don’t let anyone tell you this is the Inner West against the West. Since I became involved in this campaign, I have been out to Homebush were Auburn North Public School is stranded between a widened M4 and a Parramatta Rd that is predicted to become even more congested. It will need noise protection on every building. I’ve been to Erskine Park where Westconnex is dumping tons of asbestos waste with not even the adequate protection we have seen at St Peters. I’ve seen whole parks removed for construction of a widening King Georges Rd at Kingsgrove in preparation for the New M5. The EIS shows that traffic congestion and air pollution will be worse on the roads in this area after Westconnex. The Baird government is deliberately planning to make the environment in the South West worse. There are still no serious plans for extra public transport for any part of Sydney West of Parramattta where it is hard to survive with out a car. These are the people who would be slugged for Westconnex tolls.
It’s the environment of the Inner West that would be destroyed –but it’s the people of the West who will pay through tolls, unhealthy car dependency and a lack of public transport.
The biggest weapon the Baird government and Westconnex have is making us feel helpless and that we can do nothing. With contracts already allocated, the whole planning process is designed to encourage passivity. But we are not going to accept this; we are not going to let them roll over us. After all the East West link in Melbourne was stopped. Everyone can help share information whether by leaflet or online. Some people can take direct peaceful action and even if we don’t feel able to join, we can support those who do. We can back up the community of St Peters that will be devastated. We can do everything we can to hold the NSW Planning Department and the Baird government accountable. We can push the Federal government to halt the funding including the loans to Westconnex until there is an inquiry and an audit. To use an old slogan, one thing is for sure, if we don’t fight, we don’t win.
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