Page 1925 - Week 07 - Thursday, 31 May 1990
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designed for the car. We have to change that. This document on the greenhouse effect should be the planning document at the basis of it all. We cannot be serious about this document or our attack on the greenhouse effect if we allow Gungahlin to be planned in the way that other suburbs in this city have been planned. We cannot justify this document or the seriousness of our intent if we build, as is presently planned, 10 lanes for motor traffic from Gungahlin into the city and elsewhere. The two simply do not go together.
Our planners need to go back to their drawing boards, tear up the documents they have already and start planning for a light rail. I know that some attention has been given to that. I do not believe it has been serious enough. We should start from the basis of saying to the planners that, when the suburb is fully developed, communication will be by light rail. Planning should proceed from that.
I do not deny that roads will need to be built but, if we plan for 10 lanes of traffic, we are doing a disservice to the people who will live in Canberra in the future. We cannot have 10 lanes of vehicles, even with buses, pouring out of Gungahlin into other suburbs. It is no great trouble to design a light rail.
I acknowledge that it will not come into effect and it will probably not be taking passengers until the suburb is almost completed. We certainly cannot start with a light rail - we do not have any way of financing that - so there will be road communications. At this stage I do not think that we need any more than four lanes of highway down there, but we will need to phase that into light rail in the longer term, when the population in that area can sustain that system. Perhaps we could build roads of a certain standard and then the light rail would come in over the top of those roads so that it would replace the highways. The important element is to see that once Gungahlin is up and running at its maximum population, or near it, the light rail system comes into use. That is the only way to go.
That is the rhetoric of this Government and I believe it will be the rhetoric of any other government - the next Labor Government - that we want to do everything we can in this relatively small community to attack the problem of the greenhouse effect. (Extension of time granted)
Let us see that our deeds match our words. I shall only mention these briefly because they have been well canvassed in this house. I think Mrs Grassby made some comments yesterday about closure of the Ainslie tip. We should not close that because we are sending people on much longer journeys in their cars and we do not want people to drive their cars. That is just one course that we should be following if we are to have a comprehensive package of environmental measures that we want to take up.
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