As if the people of the Penrith Valley haven’t had a gut full of the same electoral Liberal and Labor pork barrelling. It is all only to be followed by broken promises, neglect, and dare I say abuse of the once loyal western vote.
Most voters don’t often realise, because they are just too busy trying to make living to notice the LibLab manipulative spin leading up to election day. This time don’t be fooled and don’t donkey vote because you will only endorse the same steaming froth back in power.
Federal Liberals under Little Johnny Howard patronisingly appealed to Penrith’s working class voters, disparagingly aligning them as ‘Howards Battlers’. Yet when it came to serious investment in the west, the Liberals have done bugger all to address the financial hardship of western Sydney nor anything significant by way of investment in infrastructure to embrace and support Penrith commerce in its own right.
Outer Sydney’s Penrith Valley has long been denied the public infrastructure it desperately deserves after decades of subdivision. Where are the improved roads to ease daily congestion, where is the integrated north-south public transport, the local school funding, child care funding, TAFE and tertiary investment to develop Penrith youth?
LibLab governments from Macquarie Street roll brag about rolling out new “greenfield” suburbs like Glenmore Park, Oran Park and Jordan Springs, but are quick to cry poor when it comes to them properly investing in the critical public services to support the thousands of new residents.
And so daily commute just get more clogged. Residents have no public transport to speak of, no commensurate investment is made in local education or employment opportunities and Gillards’ NBN rollout is uneven and piecemeal. In Glenmore Park the odd-numbered side of Rosecrea Court gets Labor’s high speed broadband. But new homes built on the even-numbered side of the street have been told they are on an indefinite connection waiting list. It’s Garrett’s Pink Batts and Green Loans incompetence all over.
Despite the Liberals rhetoric, Penrith has always been dismissed by the Libs as ‘Labor’s Heartland’ so why bother – they’ll always vote Labor anyway?
Similarly Labor, knows it has long rested on its laurels and ignored the people of Penrith Valley pleas for infrastructure investment out west. Labor neglect of the heartland extends back to Bob Carr’s over-promising in the 1990s.
Labor’s tail end under Labor puppet Keneally in 2010 broke its promise to Penrith cancelling the Erskine Park Link Road between the M7 and Erskine Business Park. Labors use and abuse of Penrith a safe Labor seat had come to and end.
Noted, the incoming O’Farrell Liberals have finally started the construction of Erskine Park Link Road but only so they could get Stuart Ayres in this diehard Labor electoral seat.
The Liberals only won on the rebound, after Labor’s Penrith MP Karyn Paluzzano was exposed for rorting parliamentary relief forms. Paluzzano has since pleaded guilty to four charges relating to the 2010 ICAC hearing. She admitted lying on the stand and she suspects her office manager Timothy Horan was gambling online at work and who was behind threatening letters about her daughter and two decapitated rabbits which were placed at her front door.
Lovely bunch the Labor Party.
But then the Liberals are just as bad. Who can forget the infamous Lindsay Pamphlet Scandal? Desperate local Liberals during the 2007 Federal Election concocked a hate mail pamphlet to undermine the Labor vote.
Well the election fraud backfired on Howard’s then battler for Penrith, Fiona Scott. Jackie Kelly’s husband Gary Clark, was caught distributing dodgy pamphlets thanking the ALP, on behalf of an Islamic group that did not exist, for supporting terrorists. Mr Clark, an orthodontist, was later convicted and fined $1000.
The scandal hurt the hopes of the then prime minister, John Howard, of mounting one of his trademark late comebacks and Ms Kelly’s seat of Lindsay fell to Labor on her retirement in the ”Ruddslide” of ’07.
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“Ala Akba” – The Libs 2007 Lindsay Pamphlet Scandal |
They knew what they were doing. Lovely bunch the Liberal Party.
So what has the latest incarnation of LibLabs dished up this time around for the local Penrith Council election?
Labor’s incumbent Penrith Mayor, Greg Davies, is behind the tacky ‘Penrith is Here‘ marketing campaign to ‘rebrand’ Penrith and to attract new business to the Valley. It has cost $120,000 in ratepayers money so far and where is the new business? Where is the return on advertising spend? How easy it is for Labor to spend other people’s money. Just ask Gillard, Keneally and Bligh.
Council’s Penrith is Here campaign is all about cosying up with property developer Lend Lease to fuel sprawl at Jordan Springs.
If Labor wants to distinguish the Penrith Valley from the rest of western Sydney why has Penrith Council approved thousands hectares of open space to perpetuate Sydney’s suburban sprawl? Labor is just a patsy to donating corporate developers and greedy for rates.
Some 27.5% of all new residential subdivision approvals across Sydney’s Greenfield release areas were approved in Penrith over the last year. Figures released under the Sydney Metropolitan Development Program Monitor show a total of 1,161 approvals for future residential dwellings were approved in Penrith between May 2011 and May 2012.
This represents 27.5% of Sydney’s total new Greenfield release area lots released over the period (Sydney’s total was 4,224). Penrith Council has sold its soul to developers. It is destroying the Cumberland Plain Woodland for sprawl. Everything is approved.
With an average Penrith household size of 2.9, these figures will lead to 3,367 new residents in Penrith when construction of dwellings is completed – predicted over the next 18 – 24 months.
This is on top of Penrith’s recent population growth spurt of 6,300 new residents recorded between the most recent Census periods (2006 – 2011). 671 of these new DAs for residential subdivisions were located at Jordan Springs (by Lend Lease), and 346 at Caddens Rd (by Landcom).
The Libs have plans for 25,000 houses to destroy prime agricultural farmland at Orchard Hills. No public transport, just more road congestion.
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LibLab Sprawl Policy for Penrith |
The Liberal candidate Patricia Hitchen can only spruik “more sports fields” to service the thousands of new residents the Liberal O’Farrell Government is imposing up on Penrith. She’s all for the “growth areas in Claremont Meadows, Cranebrook and Glenmore Park”. This is the “liberal thinking independent” for East Ward. The Libs now want a new M9 Freeway to cut Penrith in half and removing what remaining open space the Valley has left.
The LibLabs are hell bent on destroying the open space of the Penrith Valley that distinguished it from Campbelltown and Blacktown. Once Sydney sprawl arrives so to does the crime wave. Who in Penrith would want to live in Blacktown or Campbelltown? Well it is coming to the Valley under the LibLabs.
Penrith is traditional suburban Australia thus far still without the islamic immigration invasion which has inflicted and altered most of western Sydney. Penrith is dominated by young families on modest incomes with mortgages. But they are car-dependent and forced to commute long distances by car on increasingly congested roads, because there is no investment in local industry by either the Liberals or Labor.
LibLab Penrith Council is only interested in housing development not commerical or industrial development.
As for the Greens candidate, Peta Holmes, she is all about “making Penrith an inclusive place”. Inclusive of whom?
The Greens want Australia to become an inclusive place for another 20,000 refugees. They are part of the problem. Forget The Greens association with tree hugging under Bob Brown. The Greens under Christine Milne and Sarah Hanson-Young are now all about no borders and more asylum seekers and they have Penrith in their sights.
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Greens – The Refugee Party |
The Australia First Party is the only genuine party dedicated to standing up for the rights of locals.
Stop the abuse of Penrith by the major parties. Vote for Penrith Locals, not for waves of asylum seekers to flood the valley.
Vote One Maurice Girotto
AUSTRALIA FIRST PARTY
for PENRITH – EAST WARD