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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (12 November) . . Page.. 4001 ..

MS HORODNY (continuing):

The second amendment that I will be moving calls on the Government to develop a transport strategy to increase the proportion of travel in Canberra on public transport because, Mr Speaker, this is the real issue here. Developing a direction for our future transport needs is the real issue here. Budgets for ACTION, while they are vital to this, are still only one element of the total package. This package must include looking at making car travel less attractive and bus travel more attractive, and in order to do that you have to work with both of these elements.

The Labor Party has been very quick to jump up, particularly in recent months, and talk about greenhouse gas emissions, and they are happy to bag the Government on cuts to ACTION, again forgetting the enormous cuts that they themselves made to ACTION. Also, the Labor Party is not prepared to grapple with the total picture. The Labor Party, like the Liberals, believe that we should not interfere with people's right to drive. They say we should continue to allow more and more car parks to grow to accommodate the increase in car use as bus use continues to decline. Mr Speaker, the argument often put up by the pro-car lobby is, "We cannot go shopping on the bus". The other more recently used one is, "We need to drop our kids off at the creche or at school". The reality is that only 7 per cent of commuters drop their kids off at creches or schools. That is 7 per cent, not 100 per cent of commuters.

Mr Whitecross: So you do not care about that 7 per cent. Is that what you are saying?

MS HORODNY: I am addressing this point, Mr Whitecross. As for bussing for shopping, Mr Speaker, this is not the primary focus of a public transport strategy. (Extension of time granted) The primary focus is work-related travel. Our roads in the ACT were designed and built for peak hour travel. For the rest of the day, as we know, those roads are sparsely used and simply encourage speeding. In the meantime, the road maintenance bill in the ACT is escalating to the point where we cannot afford to maintain the roads that we have. According to the Auditor-General, we are way behind in maintenance; but this Government still has the audacity to contemplate the approval of roads like the John Dedman Parkway, and I believe that this is totally irresponsible. We cannot afford to pay for the maintenance of the roads that we have. Why are we putting in more and more roads?

Mr Speaker, a transport strategy is vital for Canberra at this point in time. I believe it is long overdue. We cannot continue to have this willy-nilly approach to transport. It is not clever and it does not give Canberrans any hope about the way this Assembly and this Government are leading Canberra on transport issues. This Government is very good at hiring consultants. It does it at the drop of a hat. Some of those consultancies have been very good. I believe that the Graham report is an excellent example of that, in that it has looked at the comprehensive issue of ACTION buses in the ACT; but it is only the start. It deals with only ACTION buses, and that is just one part of dealing with improvements to our transport system. Now is the time for the Government to get another consultancy to develop a strategy with the aim of reducing car use in the ACT, and this, of course, must be done with the community and with public transport experts in other areas.

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