Page 2250 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 3 August 2022
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this motion is passed, and we can demonstrate to the commonwealth that we support fair funding based on a regional classification and not an urban classification, we will be able to achieve that. I am looking forward to the discussions ahead.
MR PARTON (Brindabella) (11.44): I wish to amend this motion; therefore, I move:
(3) calls on the ACT Government, should they be unable to secure an 80:20 funding arrangement with the Commonwealth Government within three months, to upgrade Boboyan Road and other rural roads to an acceptable standard.
I have got to wonder what is actually going on here today, because we have got the Transport and City Services Minister moving a motion in this chamber pushing to do something in the roads maintenance space that he has indicated we are already doing, and we should be doing. Even more puzzling is that we have had a change of government federally—as has been noted already in this debate, we now have a federal Labor government—and this motion calls upon us, a Labor-dominated parliament, to push the government up on the hill, or to push the government here, to engage with the government of the same colour on a matter that I would have thought was central to the operations of this government and this minister.
Even more puzzling is that Minister Steel has indicated he has a meeting tonight. He has already got a meeting tonight to do exactly what the call here is, and that is to push the government to go with this 80:20 funding model. So, I can only assume that if this motion is defeated, he will be cancelling that meeting. I do not understand why we are running a motion to call upon the minister to do what he is already doing tonight.
I do not really get it. Why are we debating this? Of course the Liberals are going to support the gist of this motion. How could we not support it? Surely, we will all support it; but, then again, there are six Greens in this chamber, and you never know, as Mr Barr would say, what the Greens are going to do, do you? Maybe this motion will not have their support because it does involve, potentially, redoing a road.
I have never seen a Tesla on Smiths Road. I have never seen one. There is not much active travel that is going on. There is very little active travel that is going on between Tharwa and Adaminaby, and given that most car journeys on these roads are made by massive petrol guzzling and diesel guzzling four-wheel drives, and given that we are facing a climate emergency, I just wonder—maybe the Greens position is to shut down this road and make it a big bike path. Mr Rattenbury is giggling away—it would be a cracker of a ride, wouldn’t it! Obviously, there would be some climbing in it.
I have been out on Boboyan Road—I think there are four different pronunciations—on dozens of occasions. I know that at various points it has been accessible only to four-wheel drive vehicles. I have been out talking to the people on Smiths Road. I have had many conversations with the people of Tharwa and the surrounding hinterland. I have spoken to ministers in the previous Morrison government, and I am well aware of the issues here around definitions of roads; and of course we support the change to those definitions, because at the moment it does not make sense. I think it is pretty clear that we do get the raw end of the deal. I just do not understand why it
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