Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The difficulty of travelling around Sydney is one of the biggest issues facing the city. And it is such a big issue Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten don't seem to know what to do about it.
The western Sydney policies released by the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader over the past two days are striking for what they are not. That is – they are not anything like a clear indication to potential voters of what it is they are being asked to vote for.
They are not promises to build shiny new train lines to take commuters from Place A to Place B.
They are not promises to build big bus terminals, or tram lines, or to spend billions of dollars on any one thing in particular.
Instead – they are indications the Coalition and Labor want to be seen to be interested in western Sydney, want to seen to be something to improve people's lives there, but are not quite sure what that might be, nor what it might cost.
Turnbull's policy, announced in Oran Park in Sydney's south-west, is to announce a grand "City Deal" for western Sydney.
The "deal", such as it is, appears an omnibus policy to improve land, housing and, hang it, the environment as well.
The idea of a City Deal comes from the UK, where various levels of governments have teamed up with developers to work on projects.
But apart from saying that it will involve a Badgerys Creek airport, and that it will involve the state and local governments, there's little else that Turnbull was saying about his particular deal on Monday.
There's not even a pot of money promised to support whatever "deal" it is that's been struck. For a politician who has presented himself as the epitome of forward-thinking urban mobility, the whole thing is pretty underwhelming.
To an extent, however, the lack of specificity is understandable.
The federal and state governments are currently doing a study into what sort of rail lines should be extended to a Badgerys Creek airport, and those studies are awkwardly timed to be completed after the July 2 election.
Shorten's policy, announced on Sunday, is slightly more detailed. Shorten is promising $400 million for some sort of rail line through a Badgerys Creek airport from south to north.
Even this, however, is hard to understand and hard to imagine to what it would lead.
The real cost of a train line would be billions more than promised. And Labor's condition that the line should run from south to north – there is little detail apart from that – also pre-empts the findings of the study into the best way to connect Badgerys Creek by rail. Perhaps people would prefer to travel east to west?
There is one silver lining to the vagueness in the Sydney transport and urban planning promises of the major parties. The fewer ideas they commitment to before the election, the fewer bad ones they will be stuck defending after.
