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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 5 Hansard (25 August) . . Page.. 1272 ..

Mr Berry: Or the Volkswagen, as they could now properly call it, instead of a Porsche.

MR MOORE: I take the correction because of the German connection. We are going to have the Renault instead of the Porsche. Mr Speaker, had the magnetic levitation train and Speedrail been compared on a run between Sydney and Melbourne through Canberra, we may have seen a different outcome. For me that is also part of the disappointment. But that is the disappointment side of it. It is still a very exciting prospect because those of us who have ridden on the TGV or any of those trains that operate at those speeds know that they are exceedingly comfortable. The difference between going through an airport process to get to Sydney and walking down to the station, getting on a train and getting off in the centre of Sydney will be great for the vast majority of people who travel there. From an environmental perspective, it will make a big difference to the number of people who will be attracted to that train from both airline and road. I think that it will attract people from both those systems.

Mr Speaker, as part of my trip - and I imagine that Mr Berry did something similar - I went to Lille to have a look at how that town and community has developed as part of a fast rail system. They happened to be located in an appropriate spot to take advantage of the redevelopment and the development opportunities associated with the fast train. Those issues were raised by the committee chaired, I think, by Mr Corbell - or certainly initiated by Mr Corbell - on the very fast train and the advantages of it. There are some great opportunities. We should now look at how we can capitalise on those opportunities and make sure that they bring about extra work for people in the ACT to help us deliver more sustainable economic circumstances.

MS CARNELL (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (4.33), in reply: Mr Speaker, I thank members of the house for their support on this issue. I am pleased that, basically, there will be a non-partisan approach to it. For the information of Ms Tucker, who indicated that she did not know what the assessment criteria were, I mentioned them in my speech, but I will mention them again. They were financial and economic; design; technology; environmental; land corridor; construction and delivery; operations; and maintenance. Each of the four consortia were assessed against these criteria. As I think I have said before, the problem with keeping Transrapid in the process, as some people wanted, was that they did not come second. It would have been extremely difficult to keep one of the consortia that did not come second in the process if you knocked off the consortium that did come second. I do not think any of us would have wanted a process where all we did was go from four to three, or alternatively we had to keep four in the process. I did not want to make a comment on exactly where Maglev actually came. Mr Speaker, I think it is a pretty exciting project. We have got to get behind it now and I am pleased that the majority of this Assembly is going to do that.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

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