WestConnex no show ‘cowardly’ says Greens MP

BY WENDY BACON

Sydney Motorway Corporation (SMC) executives failed to turn up at a public meeting in Newtown last Tuesday evening. Their absence left a packed hall of residents angry that their questions about the impact of WestConnex on inner Sydney remain unanswered.

SMC had agreed to attend the meeting to answer residents’ questions, but left it until 4pm on the day of the meeting to let organisers know that they would not attend.

Greens MP for Newtown, Jenny Leong, was invited to speak and told the meeting that on hearing about the cancellation, she contacted SMC’s Director of Communications and Stakeholder Engagement. She was told that SMC were not prepared to expose their executives to protest. She later posted on Facebook, ‘This is disgusting, shameful and cowardly’, and urged residents to let Premier Mike Baird and SMC know their reaction.

WestConnex executives have not made any appearances in Newtown since the CEO of SMC, Dennis Cliche, addressed an information evening at the Enmore Theatre in early 2015. Hundreds of residents unanimously rejected WestConnex on that occasion.

This meeting followed a march of thousands of residents from the centre of Newtown to Sydney Park, where the second stage of WestConnex is taking effect. It involves building a tunnel from Kingsgrove to St Peters and will emerge into a massive interchange, delivering more than 73,000 extra cars into the surrounding suburbs each day.

Earlier this year, WestCONnex Action Group (WAG) and Save Newtown delivered thousands of detailed submissions opposing this second stage of WestConnex. Despite overwhelming opposition, Stage 2 was approved, allowing demolitions and tunnelling to begin last week. WAG have continued to protest, and sent a letter to NSW Planning complaining about breaches in approval conditions this week.

Over recent months, the Sydney Motorway Corporation has been drilling in suburbs from St Peters to Leichhardt, including near a heritage precinct in North Newtown. The drilling is to establish a route for Stage 3. The Baird government has announced that a planned interchange at Camperdown has been removed, leaving no exit between St Peters and Rozelle, but has refused to announce the location of planned ventilation stacks and tunnelling sites. SMC were expected to provide some information about these at Tuesday night’s meeting.

Save Newtown spokesperson Lorrie Graham told City Hub, “I feel that Mike Baird and WestConnex are treating the community of Newtown with utter contempt. All people wanted last night were some answers to pretty basic questions – what will WestConnex do to our home and community, and they couldn’t even show up for that. The anger just grew, so the community will be out demonstrating with a much greater resolve.”

The absence of SMC left UTS transport planner and expert in traffic modelling, Dr Michelle Zeibots, to explain to the audience why she and other independent experts believe that rather than solving traffic congestion, WestConnex will make traffic congestion worse, especially around tunnel portals.

Last Thursday, Premier Mike Baird met with Greens MPs Jenny Leong and Jamie Parker and representatives of WestCONnex Action Group and No WestConnex Public Transport. The meeting followed a peaceful occupation of NSW parliament house that called on the government to halt and review WestConnex.

The group presented Baird with An Open Letter on WestCONnex and asked him to act on it by halting work on the St Peters Interchange and conducting an urgent review into the project.

3000 residents have joined Greens MP and some Labor MPs, City of Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore and other City of Sydney Councillors in signing the letter.

Baird told them that he would respond to the open letter but has not done so yet.

The group also raised concerns with the flaws in the WestConnex business case and evidence that the case had not been developed on the actual costs of WestConnex.

They also raised issues of probity and corruption, based on the major scandals now engulfing major WestConnex contractors CIMIC (Leightons) and Samsung, and the lack of transparency surrounding the awarding of these contracts.

According to a joint WAG and No WestConnex Public Transport report of the meeting, Baird did not defend the lack of transparency in the project, instead arguing that it was necessary to attract private investors to WestConnex.

This may explain why SMC seems to be under no pressure to supply information to the community about aspects of the publicly funded $17 billion project.

Another meeting has been called by the action groups in Balmain on Thursday. It remains to be seen if SMC will show up and answer some of the questions they failed to answer in Newtown.