Labor’s de facto resolution of these issues seems to have left the party holding two positions in opposition. For one, it has been an increasingly effective critic of the problems arising through the Coalition’s implementation of its own transport plans. Particularly under shadow spokeswoman Jodi McKay, Labor has helped expose a lack of transparency in decision making. It has also helped shine a light on the often cavalier way in which companies building government projects have engaged with those affected. Loading Labor’s second position has been to make a virtue of the modesty of its own ambitions. Rather than asserting it has different priorities to the Coalition, Labor has often simply promised to hold fewer priorities. Rather than building light rail lines in central Sydney and Parramatta, as the Coalition has promised, Labor promised Parramatta. Labor will abandon the government’s idea of converting the Bankstown Line to a metro line linking to a new cross-city rail line. It will not build new motorways under Sydney Harbour, or south to the Sutherland Shire. To be sure, there are a couple of weeks to go until the election, so more expansive proposals could emerge. And at the end of his hold on the job, former Labor leader Luke Foley did signal one interesting – and different – policy when, he said Labor would consider a new metro rail line towards the Sutherland Shire, rather than a motorway or the Bankstown Line project. And Labor’s M4 policy is different. Labor’s promise to refund the tolls of motorists driving on a widened M4 is a qualitative break from the government’s position. This policy is shockingly bad.

The policy will encourage more people to drive. Tolls operate as simple price incentives. When we don’t have to pay a toll, we are more likely to get in our car and drive. Ridership on public transport falls. You could fairly say governments should not be forcing people to use inadequate and overcrowded public transport. But another feature of Labor’s policy is that it would give future governments less money to improve that public transport system. Bob Carr’s decision to implement cash-back on the M5 West motorway has already cost taxpayers $1.5 billion, and is set to cost another $1 billion over the next decade. Labor’s M4 promise would cost even more. Before Christmas Labor boasted it would cost only $113 million in the first year. Money spent on toll cashbacks won't be available for other Labor pet projects such as schools and hospitals. Credit:Rob Homer If accurate, this figure will certainly rise as later sections of WestConnex open to traffic. Under Labor, in other words, the state will soon be paying more than $300 million a year – and climbing – to subsidise toll roads. That is money that would not be spent on all the things on which Labor says money should be spent – schools and hospitals before stadiums and all that.

Labor’s policy is also an absurdly generous free kick to one company. It would have been one thing to promise cash back on the M4 section of WestConnex before the government sold 51 per cent of it. But Labor is retaining that position even when it means that those hundreds of millions of refunded tolls will be funnelled directly from taxpayers to Transurban. Finally, the policy is unfair. Are people who use the M4 any more deserving than people who use the M2? Or those who cross the Harbour Bridge? Or those who live in regional areas but would be, through their taxes, forced to subsidise tolls on the M4? The Coalition’s policy of giving discounted car registration to people who spend heavily on motorways is on every level cleaner and less perverse than Labor’s pledge. There is little doubt Sydney residents are increasingly exhausted by the city's growing number of toll roads. Labor’s cash-back policy might be smart politics. But if implemented, we will be the poorer for it. Jacob Saulwick is the Herald's city editor.