Published: 9 Oct 2009
Community rally around Sydney Ferries
The Save Our Sydney Ferries Community Campaign Group launched the “Gotta ♥ Sydney Ferries” campaign in the State Electorate of Parramatta last Friday.
Joined by 100 supporters, legendary heritage and trade union activist Jack Mundey had the honour of addressing the crowd to officially launch the Parramatta campaign at the local ferry wharf. “We know that Western Sydney is bursting at the seams and cutting back or selling off vital ferry services will only add more cars to the roads,” Mr Mundey said. “Now more than ever, we need a government that invests in better services. We need more public transport, not more sell offs.”
Mr Mundey noted in his address that an expanded public ferry service will ease congestion in Sydney’s West, while cut backs and sell offs will make it worse. The campaign in support of maintaining publicly owned ferries to the West also heard from the Local member of parliament, Tanya Gadiel MP who announced her support for retaining Sydney Ferries in public ownership and further supported and increase in services from the City to Parramatta.
The Maritime Union joined the community of Parramatta in Sydney's west calling for Government to expand its ferry services. “More ferry services, mean less cars and that's better for the environment” Paul Garrett, Assistant Sydney Branch Secretary told a community rally at the Parramatta ferry terminal on Friday.
“The test of any privatisation is whether it improves services to the public. Given the admirable record of Sydney Ferries in recent years, it's hard to see how that's possible,” Mr Garrett said. “In the last two years, safety has improved, reliability is up and complaints are down. So we’ll be impressing all of that upon Tanya Gadiel and asking her to support our fine ferry service staying public.”
Tanya Gadiel MP joins Angela D’Amore MP, Member for Drummoyne in coming out and publically supporting the retention of Sydney Ferries in public ownership.
