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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 2 Hansard (28 February) . . Page.. 379 ..

MS HORODNY (continuing):

I have spoken to Mr De Domenico a number of times about public transport in the ACT, telling him that if this Government had a real commitment to improving public transport they would work out a plan. It is really simple. You like corporate plans, Mr De Domenico. You like working to a plan. Why do you not work out a plan? It is simple. The vision is that we want a cleaner, greener Canberra. Surely, an aim is to reduce car usage in the ACT. A goal, therefore, would be to increase the 5 per cent current public transport usage to a figure of, say, 20 per cent. Give it a timeframe - three years, five years, whatever you like. It is really simple. It is a formula; you work to it; you get a result. If you do not get a result, you monitor what is going on, you assess what the problems are, and then you work out a series of objectives, and they have to do with incentives and disincentives. They have to do with parking, with car usage, with public transport usage. You have to increase and improve public transport so that people can rely on it, because it is only at the point that people can rely on public transport that they will use it.

Mr De Domenico: Who pays for it?

MS HORODNY: Look at how much money we are spending on roads in the ACT, Mr De Domenico. That is how we pay for it. We start looking at the proportion of money we spend on roads and we stop looking at public transport as subsidised public transport. We look at private transport and we say, "We are subsidising that very heavily as well". Look at traffic lights, look at how much parking we subsidise, look at roads, look at that whole issue, and you will see that it is not a publicly subsidised public transport system. We are subsidising cars to a much greater extent, but it is a hidden subsidy and it is one that needs to be brought out into the open. There is no way we will be supporting this motion. It does not make any sense at all to me. We need to be working on making bus transport more useable, improving the time it takes to get from centre to centre on a bus and not just making it easier for car users to get around.

MR MOORE (11.12): Mr Speaker, I rise to oppose Mr Hird's motion. Whilst I oppose it, I certainly recognise that what Mr Hird has attempted to do here is to open up the bus transit lanes in the same way as happened successfully on Athllon Drive. The question is, and it has been dealt with by the two previous speakers: Can we extrapolate from Athllon Drive to other areas and other bus lanes in Canberra? I think the answer to that question, and the reason I am opposing this motion, is: No, we cannot.

However, Mr De Domenico has suggested that he is prepared to do some careful studies as to what the impact might be and to try to assess those, and I have no objection to such studies being carried out. I think they should take into account the sorts of issues raised by Ms Horodny about what we are trying to achieve in the long term, and from that point of view I think it has been a worthwhile exercise to put the motion on the table. Unfortunately, the motion does not deal with the issue in a detailed enough way. It does not deal with the complexities of the issue; I think it was Ms Horodny who said that it is simplistic. I do not think this motion, though, having been lost, should be interpreted as saying that therefore you do not continue any studies as to the ramifications. It does suggest that, before you extend the process that has been used in Athllon Drive, it ought at least to come back to this Assembly for consideration to present evidence to us that all the issues have been taken into account. It is not something that can be done by sleight of hand, and that is the main reason I will be opposing the motion.

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