Accessibility of Sydney North West Metro

Abigail used Question Time today to ask why the Government was claiming that the Northwest Metro is fully accessible when the Council for Intellectual Disability has shown it is not.

Ms ABIGAIL BOYD (12:12:38): My question without notice is directed to the Minister for the Public Service and Employee Relations, Aboriginal Affairs, and the Arts, representing the Minister for Transport and Roads. The Northwest Metro has been promoted as being fully accessible for commuters with disability. However, a recent field test and report by the Council for Intellectual Disability demonstrated that people with disability using the service found several issues affecting their capacity to safely travel on the metro, such as doors closing too quickly, trains stopping and starting abruptly, and a lack of staff on the trains to directly assist them. Given this, what steps will the Government take to ensure that the Sydney Metro Northwest service meets the needs of commuters with a disability?

The Hon. DON HARWIN (Special Minister of State, Minister for the Public Service and Employee Relations, Aboriginal Affairs, and the Arts, and Vice-President of the Executive Council) (12:13:17): I thank Ms Abigail Boyd for her very good question that raises a lot of worrying issues. I believe the member deserves a detailed response. I will be happy to refer her question to the Minister for Transport and Roads and obtain an answer for her.

The PRESIDENT: Order! Members should wait until a Minister has finished his or her answer before seeking the call, especially when members know it is not his or her turn.

Read the full transcript on Hansard here.

TAX SUPERPROFITS TO PAY WORKERS MORE

NSW is missing out on tens of billions of dollars. By introducing a progressive coal royalty structure similar to the one in Queensland, we would have raised an extra $20 billion last year.

The NSW Government owns and controls, on behalf of the people of this state, the rights to the minerals and materials that naturally occur in NSW land.

Huge fossil fuel companies are only able to extract and sell these commodities with the consent of the State. It’s time they paid a fair price for that privilege.

The fossil fuel industry has made hundreds of billions of dollars out of their cosy relationship with governments. Granted permission to extract and sell coal, these large multinational fossil fuel corporations pay just over 7% in royalties back to the people of NSW – keeping the rest as mega-profits for themselves. These companies have a track record of taking more than their fair share and leaving communities suffering and stranded with poisoned groundwater, devastated landscapes and a stranded workforce when it suits their business models.

Globally, the hyper-inflation of fossil fuel prices driven by price-gouging opportunism and war profiteering from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has delivered record windfall profits to these already obscenely wealthy corporations. In the last year, NSW coal exports totaled over $70 billion dollars, but the people of NSW will only see about 7 cents in every dollar, or about $6 billion dollars of that amount.

Rather than going toward schools, hospitals and public infrastructure, billions of dollars went into the pockets of multinational mining corporations. The Greens believe there should be more money for schools and hospitals and less for mining billionaires.

Sign our petition calling on the NSW Labor Government to increase coal royalties to invest in communities.

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Accessibility of Sydney North West Metro

TAX SUPERPROFITS TO PAY WORKERS MORE

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