Bob Carr: How Libs impinged on Maroubra ahead of the NSW election

Premier of New South Wales Gladys Berejiklian. Picture: Damian Shaw

Let’s say you’re an ordinary voter in tomorrow’s state election. Let’s plant you, for the sake of this exercise, in the electorate of Maroubra – as it happens, where I was born and the seat I held for 20 years, now held by Opposition Leader Michael Daley.

There are some big changes taking place in your neighbourhood. Living in this part of the eastern suburbs you might have counted on always having access to Sydney’s CBD by a fast and efficient bus service. Reasonable aspiration, keep things as they are with the prospect of changes to route and upgrades in technology. But along came Gladys Berejiklian as transport minister. Four years back she adopted a plan drafted by a Green Liberal Coalition on the local council to replace part of the journey with light rail.

Forget for a moment that it has resulted in hundreds of Moreton Bay figs being hacked down along Anzac Parade. Or that the project is now way over budget, stuck in the courts and likely to cost the taxpayer $600 million in compensation.

When it’s finished you as a Maroubra resident will now travel a short part of your commute by bus then be forced to get off and queue for a tram which will creep at a snail’s pace along the ribbon of Anzac Parade, clogged because of the insertion of a tram track. Imposed on existing suburbs – or retrofitted – this light rail offers no increased passenger capacity or improved travel times. It has burnt up over $2 billion in privatisation proceeds. And according to The Australian, its total cost is set to soar over $3 billion under a proposed deal negotiated by the NSW Transport Department with a contractor.

Next to Maroubra at Pagewood there are, sprouting from the ground, six new 21-storey towers, forced by the Berejiklian Government over local council opposition and not reached by the new trams (if they ever get delivered). This new population of several thousand, will be forced to use cars. So if a Maroubra resident opts to get to the city by the Eastern Distributor (built and opened, by the way, within years of its election by the Carr Government) he or she will be trapped by bumper-to-bumper traffic.

A gruelling bus-tram combination or traffic deadlock thanks to the state government’s incompetence with infrastructure and mad infatuation with towers without reference to location, planning or design.

For good measure a beach in Botany Bay where you swam as a kid is now slated by the government for a dubious cruise ship development – dubious because located within sight of the major container port.

So buses that will no longer reach the city. Trams that will be slower with no extra capacity. And loss of a beach. One other thought. Struggling in overcrowded trams our voter will catch a glimpse of a gleaming new $729 million stadium which the Berejiklian team thinks is necessary though the existing stadium is only 30 years old. Mandated by safety, insists the politically-loyal, business-dominated stadium trust. Yesterday a 2016 SCG Trust report on safety showed they had been lying: a safety upgrade was possible for a mere $18 million.

That’s how state election issues impinge on one of 93 NSW electoral districts. The question is, can you trust the government responsible with all the big decisions to come – for Maroubra and the other communities that make up the great state.

Bob Carr is former foreign minister and longest-serving Premier of NSW.