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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (12 November) . . Page.. 4005 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

There will still be people who, even when we have the most efficient systems, will need to use their vehicles. They will need to use their private vehicles for a number of reasons; for example, to drop the kids off at school because it is their responsibility to deal with the kids going to school before they go to work. They will need to bring their vehicles into Civic perhaps, if that is where they are working, or into Belconnen or Gungahlin, because they know that during the day they will have five or six appointments in different places around Canberra. If they relied on public transport, even a very efficient system of public transport, there simply would not be time to make those appointments. All of us here understand that because we all have appointments like that. That is why we use our vehicles in this way. So we have to make sure that we can cater for both.

Canberra was specifically designed not just as a motor car city, as many argue; it was specifically designed to have efficient and good public transport. The fact that we have not put the money into public transport and have not got the city working effectively from the public transport perspective is a challenge that we have to face, and that is part of the strategy that Ms Horodny is suggesting.

There is another important aspect that has to be taken into account, and I think it applies particularly to Gungahlin at the moment. If we put all our effort into making a very efficient public transport system that gets people to move from Gungahlin to Civic, for example, then I think we are doing a disservice because the most important thing we should be trying to do, first and foremost, is to ensure that there is appropriate employment in Gungahlin, in the town centre there, so that, where possible, people do not have to travel as far. Priority one is to reduce the amount of travel that people undertake.

There is a second priority. When people have to travel, and of course people are going to travel, particularly on journeys to and from work, we should be looking for a more efficient system. We already have a particularly efficient 333 system. It is one of the few systems in the world that pay for themselves, in terms of public transport. One of the reasons why it does so is that people travel in two directions on that service. The same should happen with Gungahlin. We can consider all sorts of great toys with which to do that. We can consider light rail. We can consider the O-Bahn transport system that operates in the north-east of Adelaide. We could consider a light version of the Maglev levitation train. We could consider a whole range of efficient ways to do that. In the end, we will look at the most cost-effective way of moving people, but we should also be looking at the most flexible way of dealing with public transport.

In developing a strategy, we will also need to take into account another major factor, and that is the change in work practices of people who are using information technology. A growing number of people are spending more and more time in their own homes, doing their work at home, because they can do a great deal of what they wish to achieve with a computer and often do not need to have a workplace in the central business district or in one of our town centres. Whatever happens in terms of public transport, we ought to be taking into account the needs of these people.

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