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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 9 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 2763 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

As yet, I do not know whether there have been any statutory declarations written; but I do know that this matter is of real concern to people, and I think it is an appropriate opportunity for us to have a look at it and to demonstrate yet again that this Assembly really does take residents' concerns seriously. It may well be that, in the end, the committee sees that the department has acted entirely properly, and the committee's recommendation may well be that the department should proceed in the way it has started. On the other hand, our recommendations may be the opposite. There is no way in which we are going to pre-empt the issue, but we know that there is a real community concern that we have to take seriously. That is why I am delighted that the Government has accepted Ms Follett's motion and that members of the committee are also prepared to accept it and to do what we can to sort this issue out and deal with it.

It is something of a disappointment to me that the Minister for Planning - I will go reasonably easy because he is not here to defend himself - has not been able to sort this out and get back to us individually on what he has been able to find out and why he has not made a further decision. He will have the opportunity anyway in bringing a submission to the committee and he will have the opportunity as well, if he wishes, to appear before the Planning and Environment Committee, as he did on one previous issue, which I believe was particularly helpful. Mr Speaker, I assure the Assembly that our committee will do everything it can to deal with this issue as quickly as possible. We are also conscious of the need for capital works to continue and not to be delayed. Indeed, that is a matter for discussion on the capital works program, which I will probably talk about in a couple of minutes.

MS TUCKER (11.25): The Greens will be supporting Ms Follett's motion. I also have been contacted by constituents from the area, who asked me for particular advice on what they considered might be a wetland in the area where the road is apparently to go. I went with someone of considerable expertise, but we could not support the view that it was of great ecological value. However, the fact that these people were so attached to any kind of wild area is a really good indication of what people value. Their response to a road being put there is, once again, a very strong statement of the values that so many people still have in our community.

While we are an urban community and we use cars, the impact of the roads is a constant source of distress to people in the community. We went to a meeting on Tuesday night where we heard many people speak of their concerns about the impact of our requirement to use cars so often. The issue of public transport was raised again at that meeting, and the people who were there from Urban Services, I guess it was, were saying that it would be absolutely pie in the sky to imagine that we could double the 13 per cent of people, I think it was, who use public transport. I guess that is where we have to say, "No, it is not pie in the sky". If we had a real commitment to changing our transport strategy in this town, and I look forward to discussing it more fully this afternoon during Mr Moore's MPI, we would not have to see these kinds of events happening so often. It is not going to get better; it is going to get worse and worse, unless we decide to take some proactive action on changing our strategies so that more people use public transport and we do not have to keep building more and more roads.

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