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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 142 ..

MR WOOD (4.26): Mr Speaker, there are many fine aspects to planning in the ACT. These assets have been bequeathed to us at various times since the days of Burley Griffin. The preservation of our hills is one of those. I think our suburban planning system, the suburbs themselves, is another. Some of those assets came in early days; some have come more recently. There are also some less satisfactory features, some arising from earlier days and some perhaps more recently. Today we are debating one of those eminently unsatisfactory features of our planning, namely, our almost total dependence on roads, and that is a result of deliberate planning. It is not a case of random growth, as perhaps we find in major cities; it is as a result of deliberate planning. Mr Humphries gave emphasis to that earlier in the debate when he pointed out that too few people live close to their work. There is too much travel. It is not very good planning as we see it today. It might have been all right for a short time in the 1970s when people from Sydney or Melbourne came and were plonked right next to their workplaces; but, inevitably, that did not survive for too many years as people moved jobs or moved home.

What we are debating today is an inevitable outcome of the Y plan. There are some in this community who adhere to the Y plan as the most wonderful plan ever invented, but I would say this: If Mr Humphries had to turn around today and start planning from scratch for a city of 300,000 people, there is no way that we would have a city that stretches for 50 kilometres from north to south for a mere 300,000 people. We simply would not plan like that now. We have a plan, held up by some as so wonderful, that is causing us the most severe problems.

Mr Moore: Have a look at some other cities, Bill, and see what severe problems are.

MR WOOD: Mr Moore, we can have our wonderful suburbs, we can do all sorts of things, without scattering ourselves for 50 kilometres. With the oil crisis and then increasing concern about pollution, the Y plan was out of date almost before it was finished being planned. That is the problem we have had.

Let us forget for a minute in this debate today the enormous cost it is bringing to us, the near impossibility of this Government or any other government funding the maintenance of our extensive road systems. Trying to manage that is going to have a very powerful impact on our budgets in future years. Now we have this problem today. We are going to have, eventually, 100,000 people who have to be connected to other parts of Canberra. I do not know why it is thought it would mostly be to Civic - I do not know why that has to be seen as the major connection to be made - but we have to accommodate that. No matter what happens to future roadworks, there will have to be some of them, and there is going to be a severe and unwanted impact simply as a result of much earlier planning.

I think the only solution is to build underground, Mr Humphries. Perhaps you should think about that. I do not know what the cost of that might be, but it would solve a few other things. The fact is that because the growth of this city has slowed down so dramatically there is still a little time. There is still a little time to debate these issues, to look at these issues, and to work on these issues, and that is the intent of Ms McRae's amendments to the Greens' motion. Let us give this some more examination. We do have that little extra time. Let us commit it to finding a more satisfactory solution.

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