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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (26 March) . . Page.. 666 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

One other issue which I am quite interested in is the provision of cycle paths in the context of this city. In an ideal world, more people should be encouraged to pedal to work; but we have a city that has been designed, I think, to be more suited to the motor car than to cycles. Many people live 15, 20 or more kilometres away from their workplace. The terrain here is not exactly like Holland. It is sometimes difficult. Whilst we might argue that we have to provide all of the incentives for cyclists to cycle as far as they can to work, we are up against it in many ways because we have long distances to travel. Many cyclists will be quite happy with that; but, as one gets on a bit, it becomes a little bit more difficult. I think we have to weigh up in our minds just how far we can go with the provision of cycle paths and so on.

I, quite frankly, believe that we should provide all of the opportunities possible. It is most important that we provide all of the opportunities possible; but we have to recognise that this city has ended up being more suited, particularly in those outer suburbs, for somebody to drive to work. It is as simple as that. Notwithstanding that, we have to provide as much access as we can, safe places for people to cycle to work and cycle recreationally, and so on. One of the interesting things about the great cycle debate is that the surfaces that have been developed for the motor car are surfaces which are entirely suitable for cycles. If it were not for the motor cars, one could expect that cycles may not have developed to the point where they are now. So, they have sort of developed together. We are faced with a situation in this city where we do not have the terrain that is altogether suited to cycles and we certainly have distances which a lot of people would find daunting if it came to riding a bicycle to work.

So, we are really left with the situation, I think, of accepting that a strong public transport system, publicly owned, catering for the needs of the community and honouring those community service obligations, certainly has to be the major priority for any government. Those other means of transport to work - for instance, by cycles - have to be provided, but there are limitations to it. Mr Speaker, I think this is a good report and it will lead to better things. I, too, would like to congratulate the secretariat on putting together the report in the time that was required, and I am quite proud, I suppose, to have been involved in the process.

MS HORODNY (4.57): The capital works budget is obviously an important component of the overall ACT budget, and I am really happy with some of the recommendations that we have unanimously agreed to in the report. I am really pleased that the whole issue of ecological sustainability has been incorporated in this capital works report. Indeed, the very first recommendation states that "the criteria used to assess capital works proposals include the desirability of addressing the principles of ecologically sustainable development". This obviously is a really important issue for the Greens, and it should be an important issue for everyone else.

The principles of ESD include the issues of pricing of natural resources, the precautionary principle, the protection of ecological communities and the whole issue of addressing intergenerational equity. Although at this stage it might seem a difficult thing for people here to actually address these concerns in the context of capital works, I can assure them that in next year's capital works hearing I will be looking at the matter very closely and asking that the bureaucrats actually justify each of the proposals that they are putting up

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