COMMENT
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Receiving a press release on Monday morning from the Minister for Western Sydney Stuart Ayres announcing that frequent toll road users would from now on receive free car rego, I couldn’t help but admire the sheer audacity of the current government.
“The Government’s strong budget position allows us to give back to toll users,” Premier Gladys Berejiklian proclaimed.
This move will cost taxpayers between $25-$100 million a year – or, with the lowest figure, 33 years worth of what it would take a year to keep the Gong Shuttle free.
Now, I’m thankful I don’t have to spend big driving on Western Sydney toll roads to work. My ability to ride to work is one of the reasons I love living in Wollongong.
But hearing the cost to the NSW taxpayer of refunding motorists who drive on the M5 South West has now surpassed $1.5 billion – well, it kind of makes me feel ripped off.
With all these incentives to get people to use roads which are so costly to build in the first place, are we really to believe the state is unable to keep funding the Gong Shuttle to its full amount? It has a “strong budget position” for the people of Western Sydney.
Are we really to believe that drivers on the M5 are “entitled” (thanks Gareth) to an even greater slice of our tax contributions in an effort to get them using roads, but the Illawarra can’t have a measly $750,000 a year for a bus which keeps congestion off ours?
And are we expected to swallow the logic that incentives for cars make good financial sense, but here in Wollongong actually it would be better to remove the main incentive for using our most successful piece of public transport (that would be the free bit) because, God forbid, there’s too many people using it every day?
It beggars belief that we’re being fed this stuff, but the government can’t have it both ways. No matter which way you look at it, putting fares on our shuttle amid these other decisions is simply, unfair.