People should be cheering about Sydney's WestConnex road plan, not chaining themselves to equipment, the NSW minister for roads says.
Two men were arrested in St Peters in the city's inner west on Tuesday morning after one of them, a local resident, chained himself to an exploratory drill rig.
The protest follows a march on February 2, where more than 1000 people brought busy King Street in Newtown to a standstill over the proposed motorway.
"This fellow shouldn't be chaining himself to that equipment. He should be cheering that we're going to fix up a problem in Newtown that's been there for decades," Duncan Gay said on Tuesday.
"We're not going to be putting a clearway up King Street as they suggested. We're going to fix that parking lot ... by putting a tunnel underneath."
But many St Peters residents are not happy, including Pauline Lockie.
The 38-year-old and her husband bought their home last July, but face the prospect of finding a new place to live with their daughter.
"My home is one of the 41 that's going to be acquired if this project goes ahead, so we're obviously very upset about that, but more to the point, we're more outraged that this whole project is going through with no transparency," she told AAP.
Greens candidate for the state seat of Newtown, Jenny Leong, joined residents at Tuesday's protest.
"Local residents shouldn't have to lock on to drill sites instead of doing the school run to get the state government to listen," she said.
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