Page 2472 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 7 August 1990
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It recommended also that before any transport and engineering works are planned or designed all residents and organisations who will be directly affected by those works should be consulted and, where possible, involved in the decision making process.
Another recommendation is that before any work is commenced on the upgrading of Athllon Drive the following takes place: a further study of current traffic travel figures be completed; the results of the traffic travel survey be used in a review of the two options for the upgrading of Athllon Drive from Sulwood Drive to Beasley Street - either construction of bus-only lanes or dual carriageway - to confirm which option should be proceeded with, and justification be given as to why only sections of the staging strategy recommended by the Denis Johnston and Associates 1989 report on the upgrading of Athllon Drive are included in this capital works proposal.
The committee recommended that comment on the extent of community consultation be added to the criteria used in preparing the list of projects for the final works program and that the future recurrent implications of capital works projects should be added to the criteria used. The final major recommendation was that the Government continue its efforts to convince the Commonwealth to release funds from the ACT Transitional Funding Trust Account for urgent capital works.
Mr Acting Speaker, the processes and procedures by which the capital works program for 1990-91 was devised are generally sound and represent a vast improvement on past experience. However, there is still room for further refinement to those processes and procedures. With respect to some agencies, there is a need to involve the wider community in the capital works process to a much greater extent than is presently the case, and the provision of information to the committee on programs could still be improved. In the interests of getting the best value out of the taxpayers' dollar, there is a need for the Government and the agencies to give priority to those projects that lead to long-term recurrent savings when devising the capital works program.
Mr Acting Speaker, this inquiry has clearly demonstrated to the committee that when the Commonwealth handed over control of many of the capital assets to the ACT in May 1989 they were not in a well-maintained condition, and the costs of that poor maintenance are now having to be paid.
At this stage of the proceedings, in my closing remarks, I would like to refer briefly to the minority report of Mr Berry. These comments, unfortunately, reflect a clear attempt by the Labor Party in the Assembly to indulge in political point scoring by refusing to participate in the examination by the committee of the new capital works program. Here we have a failure to carry out one of the key duties of a member of the Assembly, not as a member of
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