Kellie Sloane
Leader of the Opposition
NSW Liberal Leader
SPEECH
I acknowledge the Premier, Ben English and the News Corp Team, Commissioner Lanyon.
Distinguished guests.
One hundred years ago, John Bradfield’s extraordinary vision for Sydney started to become a reality.
In December 1926, Sydney’s first underground electric railway opened, connecting Central to St James and Museum Stations.
What should have been an exciting day for Sydney actually turned into a bit of a fizzer.
Only 60 people got on at St James.
No one got on at Museum Station.
Hard to imagine today. Just think of last Friday and the opening of the South West Metro – rockstar crowds for a train – at 4.30 in the morning!
Sydney loves our Metros.
Not just because they are sleek, fast and reliable.
But because they connect communities.
They connect people to jobs, education and opportunity.
And they remind us of something important.
We are capable of extraordinary things in this state when we have the vision, the ambition and the determination to build them.
Today, I want to share our plan to continue that Metro legacy.
Not just the next line. Not just the next election cycle.
But a vision for how we build Sydney over the next 30 or 40 years.
Because I want to be a Premier who plans and builds for the next generation. And the ones after that.
When Bradfield first imagined a bridge across Sydney Harbour, there were plenty of sceptics.
When Gladys championed the Metro, there were plenty of critics too.
Today, millions of people benefit from that vision.
And that’s the thing about great infrastructure.
It can be controversial when it’s proposed, challenging when it’s being built, but indispensable once it’s delivered.
We’ve seen what happens when governments lose that ambition.
We saw it during this State’s lost decade after the Olympics. When infrastructure ground to a halt and our roads, rail and hospitals fell into disrepair.
We cannot let that happen again.
Because Sydney isn’t standing still.
Our population is growing. Our housing needs are changing. Our economy is evolving.
I lead a Liberal team with a proud record of building.
And we have the ambition to build again. To deliver for NSW.
Our approach has three parts.
Making better use of the infrastructure we have today.
Preparing the next metro instalment.
And planning the Sydney of tomorrow.
First, the immediate opportunity.
We have this extraordinary piece of infrastructure running beneath our city.
And people love it.
But if you’ve stood on a Metro platform in the morning peak recently, you’ll know how crowded it’s becoming.
People queuing, trains filling up, commuters squeezing in.
So, we want to make this marvellous Metro work harder for the people of Sydney.
A Liberals and Nationals Government will work to deliver three-minute Metro services right along the M1 line during peak periods.
More trains. More often.
We’ll order between 12 to 15 new trains to enable 3-minute stops during peak periods.
That’s a 33 per cent uplift in services.
More efficient. More comfortable. Getting you home faster.
Secondly, we want to connect the growing southwest to Bradfield.
The Government has done 2 business cases – we’re yet to see the detail – we’ll identify our preferred leg and make an announcement before the election.
But importantly, our third ambition – a long-term vision for a connected Sydney by completing the Metro network.
Because Bradfield understood something fundamental.
He wasn’t just planning a railway. He was planning the city that would grow around it.
He understood that transport infrastructure doesn’t simply respond to growth.
It helps create it.
It opens up new communities. It connects people to jobs. It changes where people can afford to live and where businesses can succeed.
That’s the kind of integrated thinking Sydney needs again.
But we face a very real challenge.
The NSW Budget is under pressure. Forward capital expenditure is declining under Labor. Debt is growing.
I say to you that a constrained Budget should never mean constrained ambition.
It means we need to be smarter about how we deliver the infrastructure our state needs to grow.
We have enormous strength to draw on.
We have a skilled workforce and businesses that have helped deliver some of the most complex transport projects in Australia.
We have the best tunnellers in the world – just look at what is happening 50 metres beneath the water under our Harbour today.
I want to keep those teams working when the infrastructure pipeline runs dry under Labor.
And we have something else.
Investors actively looking at opportunities to be part of the future of Sydney.
What we need is the ambition to bring all this together.
So today, I’m announcing that a Liberals and Nationals Government will establish a new Metro Investment Fund – the MIF – to help finance and deliver the next generation of Sydney Metro lines.
The fund will be designed to partner with private investors and unlock new sources of capital.
This goes to an important difference in our approach to government.
Liberals believe in harnessing the power of private enterprise.
We have no ideological objection to private investment in Metro infrastructure.
In fact, we know that bringing government and private enterprise together can deliver more, sooner, and better value for taxpayers.
Unfortunately, Labor and its union allies continue to allow ideological hang-ups to hold Sydney back.
Of course, Government has a vital role to play.
Setting the vision. Planning the infrastructure. Protecting the public interest.
But government doesn’t have to do everything alone.
History tells us these types of financing arrangements work with Metro.
And the evidence tells us there’s a new opportunity.
Infrastructure Partnerships Australia’s latest research found that 83 per cent of surveyed investors are highly likely to invest in Australian infrastructure over the next three years.
More than a third identified passenger rail as a preferred investment opportunity.
But here’s the warning.
The proportion of investors identifying NSW as a preferred investment destination has fallen from 70 per cent to just 39 per cent in a year.
That’s a 31-percentage-point decline, the largest of any state in Australia.
We’ve seen developers walk with their feet over the border to Queensland. We’ve seen our NSW economy flatline.
Under a Liberals and Nationals Government, we’ll send a clear signal.
NSW is open for business.
Our Metro Investment Fund will establish a long-term framework to help finance and deliver the next generation of Sydney Metro lines.
Government will seed fund into the MIF and invest annually to provide a long-term pipeline of capital and funding certainty.
This will provide the foundation to partner with Australian superannuation funds, infrastructure investors and specialist operators.
And we must demand substantial contributions from the Federal government which is currently cheating NSW out of billions of dollars of infrastructure funding while simultaneously taking the largest ever share of our GST revenue. But that’s another speech.
The fund will look to identify opportunities for housing, commercial development and new employment centres above and around Metro stations.
We’ll examine how some of the value created by new infrastructure can help finance the infrastructure itself.
And we’ll provide industry with something else it desperately needs.
A long-term pipeline of projects.
One hundred years ago, Bradfield imagined a Sydney that didn’t yet exist.
Today, we are the beneficiaries of that ambition.
And now it’s our turn.
When I grew up, I could not imagine Sydney without the Harbour Bridge.
The next generation won’t be able to imagine Sydney without the Metro.
Our responsibility is to build the Sydney our children deserve.
