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Action for Public Transport (N.S.W.) Inc.

Federal Opposition on urban transport

posted Friday 18 May 2012
In the Sydney Daily Telegraph of 5 March 2012 Federal Opposition leader Tony Abbott, in an article headed "Highway robbery has Sydney under siege", made some interesting policy statements on urban transport, a rare occurrence for a federal politician, especially one from the conservative side of politics.

In the article, Mr Abbott was reported as saying that "above all" the M4East motorway, between Strathfield and the city, should be built, as it would "give the people of western Sydney a proper link to the business and cultural heart of our metropolis". It was also reported that he was highly in favour of a "road tunnel under Mosman".

An APT member thought it worthwhile determining whether Mr Abbott's statements were Coalition policy, the result of rational research, or just personal observations. Were inner-city radial motorways suddenly the answer to traffic congestion, despite their having been discredited on just such grounds in the nineteen sixties?

So he asked Mr Abbott's office to name the persons behind Mr Abbott's statements. The initial response was the anticipated, unspecific, public relations brush-off. Unperturbed, he asserted himself upon Mr Abbott's office to provide further information. He had to do it repeatedly. In the end, Abbott's office refused to discuss the issue and in early May, abruptly referred our member to the office of the coalition's transport spokesman, Warren Truss.

So we still don't know whether Mr Abbott's solutions to urban transport problems are truly visionary or just throw-away lines. Perhaps he will sort it out before he becomes prime minister.



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