What is your name, political party and electorate?
Jordan Lane, NSW Liberals, and Ryde.
Tell us about your background both personally and professionally
I was born in Denistone House at Ryde Hospital, and am a lifelong Ryde local. Growing up in Melrose Park with my parents and twin sisters, I attended Meadowbank and Ermington Public Schools, and went on to be school captain of Marist College Eastwood.
I have a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from the University of Sydney, and most recently worked as a disability advocate, where I helped support a community of over 20,000 Australians living with disability, and their support workers.
I spent the last year serving our community as the Mayor of Ryde and have been a City of Ryde Councillor since 2017. We achieved a lot together, including cutting rates, wiped Council’s debt, and commenced long overdue planning reforms.
Today I live in a unit in Meadowbank with my partner, Natalie. We form part of the growing number of young professionals choosing to make Ryde their home.
What are some things you love about your electorate?
The people! You cannot find a community like Ryde anywhere else in Sydney. Ryde locals are aspirational, hard-working, and deeply compassionate. I love that through our diversity – whether cultural, professional or age – we always come together in harmony to make this community better. As the leader of the Ryde Liberal team on Council, I made sure we invested in this diversity, and nominated candidates that were truly reflective of our community. With their successful election in December 2021, I am proud to say that the current Ryde Council is the most diverse group of Councillors elected in Ryde’s history.
I also love how we come together as a people to stand up for our community. We have done that through our passionate defence of open and recreation spaces, like the Macquarie Ice Rink and TG Millner playing fields, and when we support our neighbours, such as when we successfully advocated to realign the light rail route away from people’s homes in Melrose Park.
One of the things I love most is our online community – seeing people in community groups help one another when things go missing, redirecting those wrong UberEats orders and the sharing of quirky local events and personalities brings me so much joy. It’s why I ❤️ Ryde!
What do you believe are the 3 main issues affecting your electorate and why?
Cost of living – it is clear that the cost of living is going up. I’m sure many local families do what Natalie and I do, and keep a tight household budget and try to find savings where we can. Many of the contributing factors, such as rising interest rates and overseas conflict, have created significant uncertainty in the economy, which is why measures like the Back to School, Creative Kids and Active Kids Vouchers, as well as the Service NSW Savings Finder Tool are so important to help ease cost of living pressures and help families get ahead.
I am proud to have been the Mayor who actually led Ryde Council to cut council rates for residents in 2022 at a time when the prices of everything were going up.
School and hospital capacity – Ryde is such a great place to live, which is driving significant population growth in our area. This is having a big impact on the capacity of essential public services, such as local schools and Ryde Hospital. To ensure we protect our way of life, we must make important investments now to ensure a sustainable long-term future for these services. This means building new and expanded facilities and upgrading the existing ones.
At the time of writing this, we are the only team that has committed funding and a completion date for the rebuilding of Ryde Hospital. We are also the only team that has announced the actual locations of where we are building the new Macquarie Park K-12 school, and the new Midtown primary school.
Traffic – I’m sure this issue comes up every election, but it is a constant problem for anyone living in Sydney. One of the big contributors to bad traffic is poor local planning policy. We need to have a Local Environment Plan that encourages public transport use, plans for long-term growth and identifies key pinch-points like Victoria Road at West Ryde for major investment and upgrade. We also need to work more constructively with different levels of Government to ensure we tackle local traffic issues head on, rather than point fingers and pass the buck.
Building the new Eastwood traffic lights is a tangible example of where we have worked with State and Local Government to roll out practical traffic solutions for our community.
What are the 3 key things you plan to achieve if elected?
Rebuild Ryde Hospital by 2027 – I was born at Ryde Hospital, which makes this key election deliverable personal, as much as it is the right thing to do for Ryde. The $479 million rebuild will transform Ryde Hospital into a world-class facility, delivering a new and expanded emergency department and intensive care unit, new theatres, new purpose-built ambulatory care centre, a new paediatric short stay unit and expanded medical imaging.
Build new schools – including a new K-12 campus and primary school for Macquarie Park, as well as a major redevelopment of Melrose Park Public School (fully funded in this year’s Budget). Both areas have sustained enormous growth and need new schools to keep up with demand. Macquarie Park will see a new K-12 built at a site already identified next to Lachlan’s Line, and the K-6 at MidTown Macquarie Park.
As part of our work to deliver the redevelopment of Melrose Park Public School, we have been looking at options for the new high school including within the Melrose Park precinct. An agreement is being finalised that will support this. This is on top of the recent opening of Ngarala Public School in Epping – a new part of the Ryde electorate after the redistribution – and the seven new and redeveloped schools delivered by Victor Dominello in the previous term of Government. This includes the upgrades to West Ryde Public School, Denistone East Public School and Kent Road Public School, as well as the new Smalls Road Public School, Meadowbank Public School, Marsden High School, and the $154 million upgrades to Meadowbank TAFE.
Continue Victor Dominello’s work to widen Victoria Road – traffic is at gridlock in West Ryde, and only by continuing Victor’s vision to widen Victoria Road will we be able to reduce the peak-hour delays. This is a long, big-budget project, so the immediate priority is to land a final business case, which will assist us in securing the large funding commitments needed from Treasury to progress this project.
What about your long-term vision for the area?
I never want anybody to feel as though they need to leave Ryde in order to pursue an opportunity. This means creating the education and employment opportunities of the future, so people can live peacefully in our beautiful community, receive a world-class education, be it at school, TAFE or University, and ultimately progress to a fulfilling career in the industries of the future. All of this is achievable through long-term economic management, and I hope to bring the energy, passion and optimism needed to make the vision a reality.
Other Comments
As a lifelong local who was born, raised and educated here in Ryde, I am committed to giving back to the community that has afforded me the best opportunities in life. It would be an honour to receive your vote at this election, so I can continue Victor Dominello’s extraordinary record of delivery for our community. Together, we can not only continue his legacy, but build upon it for future generations in Ryde.
I believe my past track record in delivering positive real outcomes for the Ryde community, such as cutting Council rates and saving Macquarie Centre Ice Rink and TG Millner Oval, is the best guarantee of my future performance.
Phone: 0413 407 396
Email: ryde@nswliberal.org.au
Facebook link: www.facebook.com/JordanLaneRyde
Instagram link: www.instagram.com/jordanlaneryde
LinkedIn link: www.linkedin.com/in/jordanlaneryde
