Page 3837 - Week 11 - Thursday, 24 November 2022
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good financial outcome. So it is important that the information is released, but when we release it is also really significant. The amendments that the minister has circulated give us some really good milestones and really good commitments about when we are going to see costings and business cases. I am looking forward to seeing those updates next year.
I am still concerned about how long the project is taking, and I share a lot of the community’s frustrations on this. Stage 2 of light rail was in the Ninth and Tenth Assembly parliamentary agreements. It was committed to in 2016. I am glad that the first works have commenced, but I am worried about the pace. It has taken us six years to get this far. I understand that major projects are complicated, and that COVID has affected our delivery. This stage is particularly complex, with the involvement of the NCA. The former hostile federal government was also a barrier. I am really hoping we get quicker progress from here on, because one stage of light rail per decade is not going to help the climate crisis; nor will it help us fast enough with congestion and liveability.
Going forward, light rail network planning should identify early any enabling works for light rail and deliver them now, in anticipation of future stages. This will mean that the rollout of a city-wide network can be as seamless as possible. The Gold Coast light rail project is taking that approach. The Gold Coast is in the process of delivering its third stage, and it has a fourth in the works. These stages are a bit smaller than ours; they are not the same. It is not comparing like with like, but, as an example, the Gold Coast first signed a contract for stage 1 in 2011, with completion in 2014. Stage 2 contracts were signed in 2016 and operational in 2017, and construction for stage 3 has begun and is expected to be completed by 2025.
In Belconnen we are feeling particularly impatient. We have 100,000 residents, but many of the jobs are in the city or the parliamentary triangle. The Belconnen-to-city bus corridor is incredibly well frequented and is facing significant capacity constraints already. I would like to see Belconnen light rail before the 2030s. Delivering gold standard public transport infrastructure city-wide, and in a reasonable time frame, is the expectation of Canberrans. We have to ensure that we have the capacity within the ACT government to meet these expectations.
I was really pleased to work with Minister Steel on these amendments. I am pleased to see the inclusion of a lot of transparency measures and the need to adequately resource the ACT government to ensure that we can do that timely delivery.
I am interested in the Canberra Liberals’ drive for transparency. I think we Greens share that drive, but we apply it a bit differently. Transparency on our large transport projects is really important, but the Canberra Liberals seem to apply it quite selectively. On Tuesday we were speaking about a cost-benefit analysis for the light rail project. We have heard a lot more about the need for that today. We do need that business case, and we are going to see it. We saw it for stage 1 and stage 2A, and we will see it for every stage. This is more transparency than we see from other governments running major transport projects.
What I do not hear from the Canberra Liberals is calls for a cost-benefit analysis for other transport projects—for our road projects, for instance. We spoke about
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