30m BOOST FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH IN WESTERN SYDNEY

It was great pleasure to recently join Jillian Skinner the Minister for Health when she announced the $30 million to fund the construction of stage one of a new headquarters for the Westmead Millennium Institute for Medical Research. Hundreds of medical researchers will soon be brought together in one world-class facility in Western Sydney. Once all staff are housed under the same roof, this facility will become an ideas factory, allowing some of our brightest minds to work collaboratively, and across multiple disciplines. At this centre alone, researchers are discovering genes which underlie a person’s susceptibility to melanoma, multiple-sclerosis and blindness in the elderly. From those discoveries will come much-needed treatments for patients in need. Last month, the NSW Government delivered on its promise to open this state’s first Office of Medical Research because we are serious about supporting medical research - and the grant to the Westmead Millennium Institute confirms our commitment. The director of the Institute, Professor Tony Cunningham, welcomed the funding, confirming that a new, bigger building was overdue. About two thirds of the 450 staff currently cannot fit into the Institute and are working in dated or substandard labs. This new building is about putting a lot of very bright, skilled and creative people together in modern labs so they can bounce their ideas and knowledge off each other in their own research areas and across others – and that’s what creates the big breakthroughs. The new building will house highly advanced research equipment used by the Westmead Research Hub, and will be a resource for all teaching hospitals in western Sydney.

CARBON TAX – what it means for NSW

NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell has recently said the Federal Government’s carbon tax would cost thousands of jobs and hurt NSW families. As the continued owner of Australia’s largest power generators NSW is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of a carbon tax - this will have a significant, negative impact on the State’s financial position. It will directly hit our electricity industry and this will undoubtedly result in increased electricity prices for households and businesses and is likely to result in reduced dividends - that means less funds for frontline services and infrastructure for the people of NSW. The carbon tax will be particularly savage on Sydney families where average incomes are higher than the rest of the country.
For example:
* A single income family with $65k with a child are worse off under the package;
* A couple each earning $75k with 2 children will be $536 a year worse off;
* Senior constable married to an experienced teacher (each earning $80k) will be $859 a year worse off;
* A policeman and a nurse each earning $70k a year with one dependent child will be on average $230 a year worse off even after compensation; and
* Should this couple do some extra shifts and each earn an extra $5,000 a year, that bill will increase to $528.
 
The NSW Liberals & Nationals Government will not sit idly by while this regressive tax is forced upon the people of NSW.  NSW Treasury will undertake a complete review of the package to determine the full impact on NSW.