Relationship with MTAG: MTAG has a great working relationship with The Greens and has received much campaign support from them.
The Greens ‘Trucks and our Health’ policy is a plan to get container trucks off residential streets in the inner west.
The policy includes:
- Construction of the shovel-ready West Gate truck bypass ramps that link directly to the port, to get trucks off local roads.
- Curfews during school crossing hours, curfews at night on selected streets including Moore Street and Buckley Street, and extending curfew times to include all weekend hours.
- More freight onto rail – every freight train takes 110 trucks off our streets.
The Greens fully acknowledge the link between truck exhaust and impacts on human health including cancer and respiratory ailments. In addition they recognise the impact excessive truck noise has on health.
Local upper house Greens MP Colleen Hartland has been very active on the truck issue, not just for the past 8 years as an MP but also previously as a Greens councilor on the Maribyrnong Council.Her office is very supportive of MTAG.
Statement from MP Colleen Hartland:
Truck curfews are a great short-term remedy, especially for those residents on the specified streets. In some instances we need urgent and immediate action, such as the Somerville Road school crossing curfew. If the government had only listened when we first called for a curfew on Moore street in 2010. Since then, night-time truck traffic has doubled having an unacceptable impact on the community.
It took a strong community campaign, including blockading roads, to force the State Government to act and recently announce curfews for Somerville and Moore Streets. Curfews do however risk transferring the problem as trucks just move to someone else’s street.
We need long term solutions and the Greens have a plan to fix the truck problem through building the Westgate Truck Ramps Bypass and moving freight onto rail – every freight train takes 110 trucks off our streets.
Labor had 10 years to fix the truck problem but did not remove one single truck from our streets. And despite the Liberal party’s election commitment to not neglect the West, they’ve done nothing. We will hear plenty of promises from Labor and Liberal ahead of elections, which we cannot trust.
The Greens have been a strong and independent voice standing up for the West to get trucks off our streets since the beginning.