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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (2 December) . . Page.. 4326 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

to get work on that Federal Highway duplication - were very limited because of the way the tenders were structured and the packages developed. That denied opportunities for medium-sized firms from Canberra - we do not have enormous firms, but we have competent medium-sized firms - to bid in that process.

So, what we have said in our recommendation is that the ACT Government should be ensuring that there is the opportunity for medium-sized Canberra firms - engineering firms and consulting firms - to be involved in getting work from the VHST project. A way to do that is to structure the tender packages to ensure that medium-sized firms are not pushed out by big companies. I think that is a very sensible recommendation. It is a recommendation that was driven by submissions from a range of business organisations in Canberra, including the Master Builders Association. I think it is entirely legitimate, because it is another example of saying that you have to plan to ensure that there are benefits for our economy. You cannot just assume that they will arrive because the project has been announced.

Mr Speaker, another very important aspect of the project and of the committee's report which I would like to draw attention to is the development of a transport hub. Mr Hird alluded to this earlier in his comments on the report. I think it is an important aspect to look at. The development of a transport hub is predicated on the development of a very high speed train link, the upgrading of Canberra Airport and the connection by road links to the Canberra Airport site. There are obvious economies of scale when you put all of your transport nodes together, rather than spreading them out across the city.

The committee said, in one of its recommendations, that the Government needs to be planning for the development of suitable road links to the transport hub. There are benefits for our city in ensuring that we are putting in place the economic infrastructure that allows efficient and effective transport of goods by road, connecting to a very high speed train service and, potentially, an international airport. So, when this recommendation that there be suitable road transport infrastructure was proposed by Mr Hird, I welcomed it. I welcomed it because I also believe that it is important. I also welcomed it, Mr Speaker, because, after the report had been approved, the Labor Party actually announced that we would be progressing the development of the Majura Parkway as an economic infrastructure development for the benefit of the development of the Territory. So, Mr Speaker, there we see some synergies developing between this report and the thoughts of my colleagues on the other side of this place. I think it is a very important recommendation and one we should welcome.

Mr Speaker, representations to the committee from the tourism sector also raised some concerns, which the committee was able to address in its recommendations. Those were in relation to the attractiveness of our city as a destination and the potential changes in visitor use arising from the development of a very high speed train. It was certainly indicated to us by representatives of the tourism industry that there was the potential for an increase in the number of daytrippers coming to Canberra by the high speed train, because they could potentially get to our city in an hour, an hour-and-a-half or two hours, rather than making the rather longer journey that they do now. They could do it more cheaply than they do it now, and also they could get back to Sydney in the same day.

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