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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 14 Hansard (9 December) . . Page.. 4737 ..

MS HORODNY: Mr Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister for the Environment, Mr Humphries, and it relates to the Minister's announcement of a greenhouse gas reduction target for the ACT. In measures you have announced to achieve the target you have included an initiative that motorists can voluntarily pay $25 or $50 at the time of car registration for the planting of seven or 14 tree seedlings respectively. How does this initiative reconcile with your support for the John Dedman Parkway through Bruce and O'Connor Ridge, which will encourage greater car use and require the cutting down of hundreds of trees? Why not just stop existing mature and ecologically important trees being cut down?

MR HUMPHRIES: First of all, Mr Speaker, I expected, given the way questions were bouncing around the chamber, that Ms Horodny would be asking me a question about rock and rolls, frankly, but no such luck; it is something much less interesting than that. Mr Speaker, the Government is very proud of its Greenfleet proposal. Mr Kaine outlined it, I think, a few weeks ago. It is one which we believe will give ACT residents the chance to be able to do something positive and direct in relation to their own emission of greenhouse gases by virtue of their use of their motor vehicle. I would hope that nothing Ms Horodny has said has cast any aspersions on the integrity of that scheme, or would suggest that it is not a good scheme to be using. It is already under way in Victoria and I understand it has been a great success there.

The suggestion that if you support a scheme like Greenfleet you could not possibly support the building of any new roads is a very long bow to draw. First of all, I personally, as I have made perfectly clear many times, do not intend to build any road down the corridor reserved for the John Dedman Parkway. I have made it perfectly clear that my decision has been to move to take steps to reserve the route for the road, not to build the road, and that is a perfectly rational decision to make. So far I have yet to hear any sensible reason why that should not occur. Having made that decision, I do not think it is inconsistent, then, to say that the Territory ought to provide, in some way, for the possible construction of future roads. Not even the most radical opponent of the car would say that some future road building might not be necessary.

On the face of it, there is a very serious need to be able to move residents of Gungahlin out of their present homes into other parts of the city to accommodate their needs to work, or to shop, or to do other things in other parts of Canberra. In my view there is a prima facie case, at least, for the construction of that road. However, as I have said, I do not propose to build the road. The decision has to be made at some point down the track when the need arises, based on population growth and so on. The need to have adequate roads is an issue which has to be examined hand in hand with the capacity of public transport and other measures to take the pressure off the use of cars in the city. If Ms Horodny thinks there is a contradiction between those things, I think she would have to go back and look at every other society which has successfully tackled this problem and realise that even in the best planned societies you simply have to be able to deal with both issues at the one time.

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