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Speaker 1: Jonesy and Amanda jam Nation.

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Speaker 2: Well, it's arguably the biggest plague for commuters on Sydney roads.

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Speaker 2: Every day the dreaded toll. Sydney is the most tolled

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Speaker 2: city in the world. It seems like every day they

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Speaker 2: keep rising and rising. Today Labor announces a potential new

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Speaker 2: relief for drivers. Join us to tell us about this

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Speaker 2: and about all things opposition. Ish's the leader of the opposition,

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Speaker 2: Ish Chris Mins.

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Speaker 3: Hello, Hello, Minzie Jonesy, Amanda, good to speak to you.

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Speaker 1: Hello.

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Speaker 2: Well, let's start with the announcement you're making today about

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Speaker 2: tolls over to you.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So we're putting a weekly toll cap of sixty

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Speaker 1: dollars so that you don't pay more than that. It

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Speaker 1: gives you certainty, particularly if you live on the central

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Speaker 1: Coast or in Sydney's western suburbs. And for those who

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Speaker 1: are traveling from Penrith, for example, that take the M

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Speaker 1: four and the Cross City Tunnel are one way trip

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Speaker 1: fifty fifteen dollars ninety the weekly costs to be one

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty nine dollars, so you'll save ninety nine

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Speaker 1: dollars a week. It's particularly targeted at those that have

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Speaker 1: to use their car to get to them from work

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Speaker 1: more often than not don't have access to good public transport,

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Speaker 1: and something.

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Speaker 3: We don't appreciate because I'm lucky. I get to travel

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Speaker 3: down King George's Raid and I miss all the tolls.

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Speaker 3: But I was just reading on the weekend, like Camden

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Speaker 3: to the city a week is two hundred and twenty

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Speaker 3: two dollars in tolls, and when I was reading that,

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Speaker 3: I thought that must be a month, and then well,

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Speaker 3: at first I it was a year. It's like two

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Speaker 3: hundred and twenty two bucks a week to travel in

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Speaker 3: your car into the city and to get from Camden

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Speaker 3: to the city if you work there, the public transports

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Speaker 3: it's useless.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. It's seventeen of the suburbs in Sydney

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Speaker 1: with the worst access to public transporter in Western Sydney.

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Speaker 1: And guess where all the toll roads start and finish

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Speaker 1: in Western Sydney. So we can't have a situation where

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Speaker 1: the only access that you've got to get to and

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Speaker 1: from work is toll roads. But there's no release in place,

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Speaker 1: and Jones and Amanda, you'd know at the moment there's

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Speaker 1: a weekly cap on opal fares on the public transport network.

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Speaker 1: So if you use public transport every day, which is

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Speaker 1: a good thing, you don't pay more than a set

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Speaker 1: amount fifty dollars a week. We're trying to get the

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Speaker 1: lowest figures possible to set the same principle in place.

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Speaker 1: It shouldn't be disadvantaged because no government's bothered building public

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Speaker 1: transport for your suburb.

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Speaker 2: Well, you have said before that the tolls are out

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Speaker 2: of control and the Missus dominic perite is making They've

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Speaker 2: signed secret contracts and privatized toll roads. We're going to

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Speaker 2: have more and more privatized roads. How can we keep

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Speaker 2: a lid then on these tolls? Like the government can't

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Speaker 2: bail out everybody, can they?

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Speaker 1: No, that's true, but I mean one of the things

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Speaker 1: that the government continues to say, particularly around toll roads,

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Speaker 1: is that the only way that you can build infrastructure

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Speaker 1: for Sydney is if it's built and then it's privatized.

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Speaker 1: But what they don't say next is that, for example,

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Speaker 1: on the M five, that will be paid off eight

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Speaker 1: times over, so every time it gets paid off, it

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Speaker 1: gets paid off again and again and again, and the

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Speaker 1: M four it's six times over the other road it's

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Speaker 1: a similar multiple, and all of that money goes to

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Speaker 1: a private toll road company. So the entire West Connect

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Speaker 1: system was built for twenty one billion, it was sold

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Speaker 1: off for twenty billion, but the new private company collects

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Speaker 1: over one hundred billion dollars and the revenue. So I

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Speaker 1: don't think the math adds up. And I think motorists

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Speaker 1: and taxpayers and particularly get snowed as a results of

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Speaker 1: this kind of philosophy.

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Speaker 3: So how would you actually pay for it then? So

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Speaker 3: I can't imagine all the toll companies saying, oh, okay,

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Speaker 3: well we'll waive this and let you off. So where

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Speaker 3: does this money come from?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we have to make sure that we're intervening,

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Speaker 1: and that means making sure that there's relief schemes in place.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I can only do what I'm left with.

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Speaker 1: The contracts have been signed, and we need to make

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Speaker 1: sure there's fairness over time. So I think that this

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Speaker 1: immediate relief is needed, particularly for those that can only

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Speaker 1: get to work on toll roads. We've also appointed Professor

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Speaker 1: Allen Fels, who used to run the HFC, to look

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Speaker 1: at long term solutions when it comes to ticking or

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Speaker 1: untangling toll roads, which if I think, kind of strangled

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Speaker 1: Sydney and made it very difficult and very expensive to

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Speaker 1: get around because we've.

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Speaker 3: Been led to believe that governments can't build infrastructure. As

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Speaker 3: you said, it's got to be a private company that

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Speaker 3: builds it. But you know, they built the Harbor Bridge

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Speaker 3: and the Depression and we met to do that. I

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Speaker 3: don't understand. Have we been poisoned in our minds about

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Speaker 3: how we build infrastructure.

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Speaker 1: I think that what more often than not, the government

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Speaker 1: just continues to say the taxpayers in Sydney, well, the

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Speaker 1: only way to do this is to build it and

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Speaker 1: then sell it off. But that's I was saying earlier.

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Speaker 1: I think many people are led to believe this user

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Speaker 1: pays network means that you're just paying off the cost

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Speaker 1: of building the tunnel or the road. And my view

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Speaker 1: is most people would go, well, that's fair enough. I

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Speaker 1: mean user paid system, it's paid off over time. That's

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Speaker 1: how we build, for example, the Harbor Bridge. But that's

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Speaker 1: not the case. And if you look at the economics

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Speaker 1: underneath the hood, here is the M five is a

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Speaker 1: great example. It gets paid off eight times over of

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Speaker 1: the lifetime of that contract. So that's not being you're

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Speaker 1: not being charged to build off the infrastructure. All that

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Speaker 1: money's been collected by a private company. And as you said,

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Speaker 1: Amanda were the most told city on the earth, on

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Speaker 1: the bottom space of the earth.

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Speaker 2: I guess we just hope though, if we need new roads,

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Speaker 2: that we can still attract the companies to make them

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Speaker 2: if we're going to take this loophole away.

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Speaker 1: I think that there's a good case now, particularly for

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Speaker 1: competition in toll roads in Sydney. You can't have a

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Speaker 1: situation where one company owns basically ten of the twelve

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Speaker 1: toll roads. Because we can't have a situation where that

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Speaker 1: kind of market dominance is in place. I think it

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Speaker 1: leads to unequal outcomes for a lot of motorists.

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Speaker 2: I'll tell you what, free up the other supporting roads too,

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Speaker 2: because you know, people if they if they can take

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Speaker 2: the toll road without it being such an expensive things

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Speaker 2: to do, it makes all the other auxiliary roads flow

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Speaker 2: a bit more easily in the mornings and peak out too.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. I mean four billion dollars

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Speaker 1: roughly to build the m A and surface traffic along

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Speaker 1: King George's roads don't increak road and Canterbury Roads rapidly

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Speaker 1: increased after it was built. It should have had the

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Speaker 1: reverse a thing. If you build this kind of infrastructure,

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Speaker 1: you expect surface traffic to drop, and the reason it

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Speaker 1: massively increases because the cost is just too high.

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Speaker 3: It's too high. Well, Chris, it's always great to talk

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Speaker 3: to you. Thank you for joining us today.

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Speaker 1: Thanks James, thanks the man, all the best guys.

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Speaker 2: Thank you.

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Speaker 3: Opposition Leader Chris Binsay