With a dollar symbol cheekily superimposed onto a photograph of the city’s most iconic tollroad, NSW Labor launched a petition – some may say scare campaign – to rail against the Coalition government adding a new toll to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was 2021, and Chris Minns had finally snatched the leadership of the Labor Party on his third attempt.
The political hardhead was straight out of the blocks with a big, bold promise. As the new leader of a floundering opposition, Minns jumped on an issue that was both peak Sydney as well as bread and butter Labor. He used his first public comments after convincing his party room that he was its best hope of electoral success to declare that NSW Labor would never allow new tolls on old roads.
Minns will have to reverse his position on no new tolls on old roads or risk undermining the very report which is meant to be the answer to Sydney’s toll woes.Credit: SMH
As well as trying to stoke fear that the Coalition was about to flog off the Bridge and Harbour Tunnel (the former government wasn’t actually considering this), Minns’ words played straight into Labor’s war on privatisation. His comments also highlighted a stark inequality, with which even the Coalition could not disagree. Motorists in western Sydney pay exorbitant amounts to drive on the city’s roads and that was only going to worsen without a drastic intervention.
Labor, under Minns, pushed out a petition to voters, urging them to support “no new tolls on the Sydney Harbour Bridge” and his MPs stood up in parliament to argue against the horror of tolling the bridge in both directions. The opposition leader continued his war on tolls all the way through to the election. One of Minns’ key election promises, which Labor delivered, was a wide-ranging toll inquiry to lift the lid on the secretive contracts with tolling giants and provide a solution to the inequity of Sydney’s sprawling user-pays road network.
There is a government maxim that you do not order a review without knowing the outcome. If you subscribe to this theory, then nothing emerged in this week’s weighty toll review interim report, produced by the former head of the competition regulator Allan Fels, that should have surprised Labor. Most notably, this would include new tolls on old roads. To be specific, tolling the Harbour Bridge and tunnel in both directions, as well as the Eastern Distributor.
Immediately after Fels’ report was released, NSW Labor was quick to respond that no decisions had been made on the future tolling arrangements for the harbour crossings or the Eastern Distributor. It did, however, kill off Fels’ recommendation to end politically popular toll relief, including the M5 cashback and its $60-weekly toll cap. Clearly, Labor did not see that recommendation coming when it devised its terms of reference for the review.
Nonetheless, on two-way tolling of the three motorways, Fels was clear. Not only is it critical for traffic flow (to ensure motorists do not favour the free options over the paid), but it is also about fairness. It would allow extra revenue – to the tune of $350 million a year – to be redistributed to help lower charges elsewhere.
This leaves NSW Labor with an almighty conundrum, not dissimilar to the one Anthony Albanese found himself in recently around changes to stage 3 tax cuts. Remember those five words that came to define Albanese’s position on those cuts? “My word is my bond,” the prime minister infamously said on the Seven Network when he was asked about the future of the stage 3 tax cuts shortly after winning the May 2022 election. He did not just say it then, he repeatedly said it was a promise he was not going to break. That was, of course, until he had to change his mind and go back on his word.
You can’t to do a U-turn on a toll road, but Minns might have to
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13.03.2024
With a dollar symbol cheekily superimposed onto a photograph of the city’s most iconic tollroad, NSW Labor launched a petition – some may say scare campaign – to rail against the Coalition government adding a new toll to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was 2021, and Chris Minns had finally snatched the leadership of the Labor Party on his third attempt.
The political hardhead was straight out of the blocks with a big, bold promise. As the new leader of a floundering opposition, Minns jumped on an issue that was both peak Sydney as well as bread and butter Labor. He used his first public comments after convincing his party room that he was its best hope of electoral success to declare that NSW Labor would never allow new tolls on old roads.
Minns will have to reverse his position on no new tolls on old roads or risk undermining the very report which is meant to be the answer to Sydney’s toll woes.Credit: SMH
As well as trying to........
© The Sydney Morning Herald
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