Riverwood Housing Estate

Hansard ID: HANSARD-1323879322-134238

Hansard session: Fifty-Eighth Parliament, First Session (58-1)

Riverwood Housing Estate

Mr MARK COURE (Oatley) (17:22:56):

Today I stand with my community and highlight their concerns with the renewal of the Riverwood Housing Estate. I have been monitoring this proposal for many years now. Since it was first announced, significant changes have been made that meant it was no longer appropriate for our community. To make it absolutely clear, I am not against sensible development that benefits the community. However, I am against rampant overdevelopment without any consultation or consideration to appropriately upgrade the essential infrastructure for the community.

In 2016 when this project was first announced by the then Minister for Social Housing, the Hon. Brad Hazzard, it comprised just under 1,600 new social and affordable homes mixed with private housing. The recent completion of the neighbouring Washington Park demonstrated that there was strong potential to create a vibrant mixed-use precinct. Not only was the plan to boost social housing and affordable housing on the site, but planning would include investigations around community amenity, services and infrastructure that would be needed for the local population.

Since that time, the Land and Housing Corporation drastically increased the number to almost 4,000 new homes as part of the project. That would mean that we would now be looking at around a 400 per cent increase to the suburb's current population and building heights of more than 12 storeys. Although the Land and Housing Corporation decided to drastically increase the number of homes, there was no plan to invest additional money to see greater infrastructure improvements. Whilst local streets would be realigned and upgraded, they would still converge into Belmore Road, which had no funding allocated for upgrades.

Belmore Road already experiences significant congestion in the peak periods, as do neighbouring streets including Hannans Road, which also had no mention of receiving an upgrade. Parking is already a challenge on roads like Belmore Road. The planned development in its most recent form would significantly exacerbate this issue by adding even more cars onto our already crowded local streets. No confirmation was made about upgrades to Riverwood Public School, Narwee Public School or, for that matter, Hannans Road Public School. Instead, the plan was to monitor the situation, which is not a reassuring statement to make whilst it was clear the plan was to build 4,000 homes in direct proximity to the local schools.

It was also clear that the Land and Housing Corporation had no plans to fix the local transport infrastructure. Instead it just wanted to tick a box to fulfil a bureaucratic target. That is not only unfair to current residents but also future residents who would be moving into those properties. Both current and future residents of Riverwood deserve to have local amenities, services and infrastructure that meet the community's needs and expectations. This project needs to go back to what it started as, which was more than just a simple rezoning. We need to look at widening Belmore Road and widening the bridge over the Riverwood station. Our community wants the Government to focus on building places and communities that current and future generations can enjoy, with local amenities, services and infrastructure that meet people's needs and expectations.

As part of this project the community wants a sensible number of properties built, comprising new social and affordable homes mixed with private housing. The community wants to know that upgrades to schools in our local area will be guaranteed to ensure it can meet the demand of a growing community. Belmore Road needs significant upgrades between the M5 and the train line with the addition of traffic lights or roundabouts at more intersections to assist with safe traffic flow to surrounding local streets. Our local parks, community and sports centres need to receive funding for upgrades to deal with an increase in use by our community.

Without infrastructure upgrades occurring at the same time with the housing developments, this project simply cannot go ahead. I call on the planning and housing Ministers to look at the history of this project and the concerns that have continuously been raised by the community. The previous Government understood this. We sent Land and Housing Corporation plans back to the drawing board. Current Government Ministers should ensure that the department is seriously redesigning the project to be in the interests of the community and future generations. As I have said before, I will not stop fighting until the community gets the right outcome.