Only a judicial inquiry has the power to hold the secretive Sydney Motorway Corporation to account.
The project has gone from worst to worse, with the destruction of our local communities, exorbitant tolls, legal challenges to acquisitions, through to the multi-billion dollar cost blowouts.
At every turn, the Baird-Berejiklian Government has shielded the project from proper public scrutiny by:-
- Establishing the Sydney Motorway Corporation as a private entity, effectively exempting the project from requests under the Government Information (Public Access) Act;
- Ignoring tens of thousands of public submissions;
- Refusing to release figures of patronage on the widened M4;
- Approving Stage 3 of the project without releasing detailed information on design of the Rozelle Intersection.
A parliamentary inquiry chaired by the Rev. Fred Nile MLC is currently underway in the NSW Parliament, with the full support of the Labor Opposition and non-Government members. But its clear we need to dig deeper through a Judicial Inquiry with the full powers to hold the Sydney Motorway Corporation to account.
I call on Premier Berejiklian and the NSW Liberal-National Government to adopt NSW Labor’s position of holding a full Judicial Inquiry into WestConnex as a matter of urgency in order to restore public confidence in the management of infrastructure projects and priorities in NSW.