Sydney's toll burden: our call for one fair network

Sydney is routinely described as one of the most tolled cities in the world. More than a dozen toll roads criss-cross the city, each with its own pricing, its own escalation clauses and its own contract — many of them confidential, many of them running for decades to come.

The burden doesn’t fall evenly. It lands hardest on western and south-western Sydney, where driving is least optional and the motorway network is newest. Families out west have reported annual toll bills running into the thousands of dollars — effectively a private tax on living further from the harbour.

None of this is news. The NSW Government’s own independent review of toll roads found the network’s pricing to be inconsistent and inequitable, and recommended moving towards network-wide reform. Relief measures such as the weekly toll cap have taken some of the sting out — but a rebate scheme layered over a broken structure is a patch, not a fix. The contracts keep escalating underneath it, and taxpayers fund the difference.

The Democrats’ position is straightforward:

• One network, one logic. Tolls should be set consistently across the network — based on distance and time of day — rather than by the accident of which contract covers which stretch of road.
• Open the books. Concession contracts, traffic forecasts and escalation formulas should be published. Motorists are paying for these roads for decades; they’re entitled to read the terms.
• Never again. No future toll concession should be signed with decades of locked-in, above-inflation price escalation and secrecy provisions. Every new deal should pass a published public-interest test first.

Untangling existing contracts is genuinely hard, and anyone promising to tear them up by Tuesday is selling something. But “hard” is not “impossible” — it’s a negotiation, and it starts with a parliament willing to demand it.

That’s the crossbench we intend to be after 13 March 2027. If a fair toll network sounds like something worth voting for, join us and help build the case.