I am still surprised as to how someone willingly gets on a bike and takes a huge risk with cars, trucks and buses, often travelling well over 80 km/h. Motorists get fined for not wearing a seat belt and not strapping their children in properly, for good reason. It is unsafe to be in a vehicle without being belted in properly. That leaves cyclists very vulnerable. No one would suggest it is safe for pedestrians to be on the roadway, so why should it be any different if a pedestrian gets on a bike? While individuals do take all sorts of risk voluntarily every day, either by necessity, or for the thrill of it, the road is quite a different environment. Government with its regulatory powers is the only way a safe playing field can be set for all who wish to use our roads.

The claim put to me often by cycling lobby groups, "that bicycles are non-motorised vehicular transport and have as much right to be on the road as any other vehicle", was a claim I rejected firmly every time. And they never spoke up at all for the thousands of mums, dads and kids who wanted to ride their bikes on a weekend and couldn't because there were no safe facilities.

In rejecting the "we have a right to be on the road" mentality of cyclists and their lobby groups, I also took a measured and balanced policy position on how best to separate bicycles and vehicles from our roads over time.

Shifting cyclists off our roads or even banning them was neither fair nor entirely possible without providing off-road alternatives. I made a decision that all future major road infrastructure would be built with off-road cycle ways.

This included any major cyclical maintenance on road surfaces, which would include a section of off-road cycle way along the length of the newly refurbished road. This policy along with cycle ways along some rail corridors, started with the Wolli Creek Valley Cycleway with the M5 East, the parallel off-road cycle ways along bus only T-ways, running from Liverpool to Parramatta and on to Rouse Hill and finally the best of them all, the 40-kilometre, 3.5-metre wide, grade-separated, off-road cycle way along the length of the M7 motorway. The M7 cycle way is probably the longest and best engineered off-road cycle way in the country. To ensure a person could safely cycle non-stop for 40 kilometres, without crossing a road, or passing through a set of lights, the cycle way needed to go over and under numerous off ramps and intersections along its entire route.