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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 131 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

In saying so, I should put on the record very clearly, Mr Speaker, that I do not have a particularly strong view about the absolutely dire necessity of proceeding with a parkway along that route in the near future or, indeed, at all if an alternative can reasonably be identified and developed. There is no getting away from the fact that the creation of a road of that kind will be very expensive. Costs have been estimated at, I think, at least $30m. It could well be more than that by the time the road comes to be built. That cost is a direct cost, but also it has arguably some other cost to the rest of the community. No government, in its right mind, seeks to move quickly down the path of building a road for the sake of having shown it has built a road, particularly one of this kind through an area of Canberra which is certainly viewed by some people as being sensitive.

However, Mr Speaker, I have to put on record that, although I hold out to those in the community who would wish to change the Government's or the Assembly's mind about this matter the prospect that they may produce evidence which could do that, the evidence in favour of a major road in approximately that location, in my view, is very compelling indeed at this point in time. The fact is that there will be in excess of 100,000 people living in Gungahlin by the time that town is completed. The time that will take is a matter of some speculation. While the growth of Canberra is very slow at the moment, I, for one, believe that that rate of growth will not remain. We will get better growth, the kind of growth we have had in the past, back in Canberra in the future; but certainly it will take a number of years before Gungahlin is fully developed. But the point is that that stage will eventually be reached and there will, at that stage, be over 100,000 people living in Gungahlin. Mr Speaker, I believe that, on all reasonable projections of the transport demands of those 100,000-plus people, we have to expect, and have to plan for, a road that will be able to carry them out of that township and into that township at those times of the day when other Canberrans choose to travel in large numbers as well; namely, at peak hours on weekday mornings and afternoons.

I want to put to rest a number of misconceptions or misstatements in Ms Horodny's opening remarks. She suggested that the Government does not have a clear indication of the need for that road, and I think she suggested specifically that the Gungahlin external transport study of 1989 - GETS - was not a sufficiently clear indication to the Assembly or to the Government that a road of this kind was necessary; that, indeed, the question of whether a road was needed at all was one that was left open at the time that report was brought down. I have the executive summary of GETS with me, which I propose to read from. I just remind members that this was the product of a very extensive process of public consultation at the time, just before the beginning of self-government. Approximately 750 residents participated in the GETS consultation; and 58 organisations, including 24 schools, either were individually consulted or submitted written versions on their own initiative. All households in the inner Canberra north area were invited to take part in the study, and a very extensive degree of public interaction with the concepts being put forward was achieved out of that study.

The study's report concluded:

Provision of additional road space in corridors that will achieve three principal objectives in a balanced way, namely ...

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