2016-08-15
Speech in Parliament — Last week I attended the blockade of Francis Street along with many other community members. The reason this had to happen yet again is that the government will not say if there will be a truck ban after the western distributor is built.
There is no point saying, ‘Oh, you’ll just have to wait; we’ll see what it’s like after it’s built’. We need to know that there is going to be a truck ban.
Interestingly, the day before, the minister, Minister Donnellan, blasted the local community for daring to blockade the road, for daring to take peaceful civil action. In fact he said — and he is the state minister — that he thought that the residents complaining about trucks on residential streets was quite useless and that the government was getting on with it and doing it, yet the government will not say when a truck ban will come.
He also said, interestingly, that one of the reasons he objected to this was that he felt the residents were playing Kumbaya with the Greens. Well, I do not know all the words to Kumbaya, but I was certainly happy to be there with the residents on that day, standing up for the community, because clearly the Labor government will not do anything about a truck ban.