MR JULIAN LEESER MP: I am Julian Leeser, I am the Member for Berowra and it is wonderful to welcome the Prime Minister here to the electorate of Berowra with my friends and colleague Paul Fletcher, he is the Member for Bradfield, but also the Minister for Urban Infrastructure and also the New South Wales Minister for Roads, Duncan Gay.
We are here to talk about NorthConnex. Now you can hear the trucks and cars whizzing through Pennant Hills Road and I can tell you this is the absolute number one [inaudible] in my electorate.
NorthConnex is going to make an enormous difference to the people of my electorate, as someone who lives in Pennant Hills and drives the road every day I know how bad it is, it is one of the worst roads in the country and NorthConnex is going to repair that and Prime Minister we are so grateful to have you here to talk about NorthConnex with us today.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, Julian, thank you and I am thrilled to be here with you and with Duncan and with Paul and some of our State colleagues to talk about this great partnership between the private sector, the Federal Government and State Government - working together to deliver great urban outcomes for the people of New South Wales.
Here in Julian’s electorate, you see this one of the most congested roads in Australia. That congestion is coming to an end and it is coming to an end because the New South Wales Coalition Government, the Federal Coalition Government, are working with the private sector. Building this NorthConnex tunnel, will take that traffic off the road; totally change the urban environment in this part of Sydney.
This is a massive investment in infrastructure that will make our city more liveable to serve the people. That’s our commitment and we’re doing this right across the country. We have $50 billion in road transport infrastructure right across Australia, road and rail. What we are doing is ensuring that we work with our new approach to cities, collaboratively with state governments, with city governments, with the private sector to ensure that we get the best outcome for the taxpayers’ dollars and we build the cities that will enable us to grow and prosper in the years ahead. This is an environment changing, a life enhancing piece of infrastructure that will transform this part of Sydney, take those vehicles off the road, improve travel times, and improve the liveability.
So you can see it’s no wonder the local members are so pleased. To Duncan, I just want to say how great it is to work with you and Mike all of your team in collaborating on this very important project.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, Happy Birthday…
PRIME MINISTER: Thank you very much, I was expecting the media to sing me a song but…
JOURNALIST: You haven’t heard my singing voice.
PRIME MINISTER: That would be cruel and unusual punishment I think.
JOURNALIST: At the next election you will be 64. Will you do as Mr Howard once said and reflect on your retirement?
PRIME MINISTER: Well right now I am reflecting on the fact that it is a beautiful day. I am filled with enthusiasm and energy and as I’ve said before, I am sure there have been better Prime Ministers than me but there has never been a happier Prime Minister so thank you for your birthday good wishes.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, a toll road, why don’t governments build roads that people can drive on for free anymore?
PRIME MINISTER: Well governments do in fact, if you look at the massive amount of money that we’re investing in our national highways you can see that. Most of our funding is going in to roads, national highways that are not tolled. But it is part of the mix, Duncan I don’t know whether you want to enlarge on that and talk about it from a state point of view.
THE HON DUNCAN GAY MP: Prime Minister the bulk of the money that we are spending on roads is on roads that aren’t tolled but in addition to that to be able to work private enterprise and ourselves we put some funding in and use tolling for the rest, a user pays. The alternate is to take that money away from schools, hospitals, police – that’s not an alternate when you have an ability to be able to balance it; we think that is a better way to go.
We are building more roads in New South Wales than Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and the ACT added together. That is all the Labor states added together. We are fair dinkum about it, the Federal Government has just been terrific working with the states and the grown up relationship that we’ve got with the Federal Government is just outstanding.
To be able to deliver this project and other projects, people of Sydney were used to the Labor Party putting toll roads in place. First of all, they did not put any money in, then they took some money upfront and the tolls were high because of the way they did it. We’ve put money in and we haven’t taken money of these projects. So what we’ve done has been balanced and a proper way of doing in.
PRIME MINISTER: That’s right.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister can I ask a question about housing, do you agree with the Treasurer that housing in at least the three big cities is becoming increasingly unaffordable and if so, what is the government going to do about it?
PRIME MINISTER: There is no question that housing – it is becoming harder for young people to get a start in the housing market. Housing affordability particularly in Sydney and also in Melbourne, particularly in those two cities has become much more expensive.
It is very clear what the cause is, we simply have not been building enough dwellings. That has been the case for a long time. I have to say again, with giving credit where credit is due to the Baird Government here in New South Wales - that the rate of dwelling construction in New South Wales and in Sydney in particular has really picked up. But there is a very big backlog. Remember when Bob Carr the Labor Premier said that Sydney was closed? It was full up? What he basically did was put the brakes on development. This was a classic Labor denial of reality. So you have failure to meet demand, year after year and you get the consequences.
So increasing supply is absolutely critical and that’s what our Cities Policy is all about, working closely with the state governments and the local governments to ensure that we get the urban outcomes that allow there to be more dwellings, more affordable dwellings right across the city.
That is a key part of our Western Sydney City Deal that we’ll be signing very shortly and that Mike Baird and I were talking about late last week.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister you’re talking specifically about investment in infrastructure here. Are you concerned with the degree to which foreign green activist groups, particularly in the US are able to intervene in the Australian economy, particularly with regard to the resources industry, specifically Adani? Is it time to look at the charitable tax-deductible status of these organisations? Would you re-float the idea of your predecessor to restrict access to the courts process of some of these organisations?
PRIME MINISTER: As you know we did present that legislation to the Senate in the previous Parliament and it was rejected. Look, we have a robust democracy. People are entitled to bring their cases before the courts but there is no doubt that there has been very systematic, very well-funded campaigns against major projects. So it’s right to express concern about that.
We did present some legislation to the last Parliament but it was unsuccessful and we will obviously reassess the tenor of the new Senate to see whether it would have the appetite for supporting it in the new environment.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister how would you describe your relationship with Tony Abbott?
PRIME MINISTER: Cordial.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister you’re heading to Queensland soon, is that partly due to fears that One Nation is eating in to your Coalition vote?
PRIME MINISTER: Queensland is a big part of Australia, I’m the Prime Minister of Australia, I’m the Prime Minister of all of Australia. So I travel a lot and I’m looking forward to being in Queensland this week and the Cabinet will be meeting in Brisbane tomorrow and I’ll be going out to western Queensland and northern Queensland. Back to Brisbane at the end of the week for a very important summit addressing the scourge of domestic violence.
So I’ll be in Queensland for the rest of the week, it is a very important part of Australia as indeed is every part of Australia. While I have to defer to my state colleagues for their state patriotism, and I am from New South Wales, to all the States and Territories, I have to say - in the words of that great Australian philosopher - “I love youse all”.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, another shark attack in northern New South Wales, is the Federal Government moving quick enough on shark attacks?
PRIME MINISTER: This is an issue that’s being addressed by the State Government.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister the tolls on this road are partly funded by increasing tolls on other roads in Sydney, the F7 and also putting tolls on other tollways. Do you think that’s a fair way of paying for infrastructure, to spread it across the city or…
PRIME MINISTER: These tolls are managed by the State Government. We have Duncan here can address that for you.
THE HON DUNCAN GAY MP: Look what we put in place was a balance. People that were using the tolls - sorry - what we put in place was a balance between people who were using the roads. We’ve been completely up front about the tolls that have been applied. This was an unsolicited bid and as such the structure of the bid came in [inaudible]. We thought it was fair in a number of areas and that’s why [inaudible] ERC, and the infrastructure commitment that we took to Cabinet and that was approved.
But I’ve got to say when you see reports today of infrastructure, mainly in other states with blow-outs in cost, this is one project that’s on time and on budget. The people simply can’t wait see it open in 2019.
JOURNALIST: Minister the next toll is coming up next year on the widening of the M4 – I understand the Government does have a firm date? Can you reveal that date so owners have time to prepare, get their e- tolls etc?
THE HON DUNCAN GAY MP: Look the firm date is when the work is completed on the widening. That will be in the first half of next year. But it will not happen until the work is totally completed. We will, if the four lanes are finished before the work on the project is done, the final work, we will allow people to use it toll-free as we should.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, the Deputy New South Wales Premier wants to reclassify the Adler shotgun, does this make New South Wales [inaudible]?
PRIME MINISTER: The position is, as you know, is that the guns import is banned until such time as the States and Territories agree. So the ban remains in place and if they haven’t agreed, if they don’t agree, it’ll remain in place for a very very long time.
JOURNALIST: Just further on the intervention of foreign groups in the Australian economy, do you have concerns about the direct link with the Hillary Clinton election campaign and the group running the campaign against Adani, in the form of John Podesta her former adviser?
PRIME MINISTER: We’ve only got a couple of weeks to go and I’ve managed to stay out of the US election. I’ll continue doing that until the second Tuesday in November.
Thank you all very much. It’s a beautiful day and thank you all for joining me here on my birthday.