The Missing Link !

With just a few months to the next state election the Labor leader of the Opposition announced that he was resigning the leadership, effective immediately.  There have been whispers of an indiscretion at a Christmas party in 2016 when Luke Foley is rumoured to have behaved inappropriately towards a female ABC reporter.   This was levelled under parliamentary privilege recently by a government member and today it gained substance.     Foley denies the claim, but feels that clearing his name and providing leadership in an election battle simultaneously would be impossible.  He intends to sue for defamation.

The New South Wales state election scheduled for March of next year is critical in deciding whether Wollongong and the entire south coast stretching to the Victorian border ever gets that F6 extension to bring a modern motorway in to the heart of Sydney.   It has been continuously shelved as money has been spent creating arterial road systems to the north and west of Sydney and now that missing link to the south is finally on the drawing board.

The present government plans to commence a vital  section joining Arncliffe to Kogarah, but that now depends on their gaining an election win.   The Labor party is threatening to discontinue building toll roads and instead spend on public transport and it looks like Sydney's south will lose out in both ways if that happens. Labor has announced that if it wins it will dump this Arncliffe/Kogarah project.

Wollongong and its steel mill has been a traditional Labor voting enclave and consequently the Libs have been reluctant to spend money there.  When Labor is in state office it takes that vote for granted and spends where money can buy votes.   That has sealed the fate of this F6 extension for countless decades.

Wollongong and its vast hinterland suffers two major transport disadvantages.  Not only does it lack a fast road entry into the heart of Sydney it also has a rail connection that takes an hour and a half to bridge that eighty kilometre gap.   For much of that journey, the train travels at a walking pace because of the twisting line through the escarpment, and even light rain brings landslips that bring service to a halt.

The answer is abundantly clear.   We need a rail tunnel through the sandstone escarpment to connect Thirroul with Waterfall.   Various tunnel boring machines are completing their work on the new metro system and logic dictates that creating that tunnel should be high on the list of priorities.  The fact that Wollongong and the south has become more marginal in delivering voting returns should have the attention of both sides of politics.

A lot of once gracious suburbs of Sydney are protesting as high rise is being inflicted on them.   The escarpment widens out past Kiama and could accommodate new housing and take the pressure off Sydney if it could be connected by a speedy rail service to the important jobs market.   That can never happen until a tunnel is created to remove that blocking effect north of Wollongong.

Its about time the south put pressure on both sides of politics.  A vote is something of value and we need to make sure our politicians understand that it is conditional on their undertaking to fund improvements to both road and rail connections to Sydney.   This coming election is important and we need to make sure that the future of this important area figures in the outcome.

Both sides of politics must be driven to unequivocally state their commitment to providing those missing road and rail links.