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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 3 Hansard (8 March) . . Page.. 852 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

freeways and it is not going to serve the interests of anybody in Canberra to go down this road.

As Mr Corbell said, this government has gone backwards in its support for public transport. In particular, Gungahlin residents are suffering as a result of the zone system. There are no employment opportunities in Gungahlin. Last week we had this debate with minister Smyth, who is quite happy and supportive of the development of a major commercial area at Brindabella Park at the airport. He is cooperating with the airport to do this. But there is no response as to what the Gungahlin Drive proposal means for the location of employment in town centres. There is no response from the minister for the environment on what it will mean for greenhouse gases if we continue to leave suburbs like Gungahlin with no employment focus.

So there can be no argument from this place about how this proposal is serving the people of Gungahlin. It is totally not serving the people of Gungahlin. They are going to end up with congestion and traffic problems. As well, people who live in the inner north are going to suffer as a result of this inappropriate response to this planning issue.

There is another issue, of course, which obviously matters to some of us more than others, and that is greenhouse. Some years ago, in response to a Greens' motion, the government set a greenhouse target and gave a commitment to developing an integrated land use and transport strategy. However, we still have not seen that. Instead, all we saw in the last budget was the traffic jam plan-and that was more roads. We have not seen the government develop this integrated land use and transport strategy. We know that something like 22 per cent of greenhouse emissions are the result of transport, the use of cars. We know that it is increasing in this area. We know that the greenhouse effect is a major global environmental issue and this government needs to be condemned for its hypocrisy.

On the one hand, the minister claims credit for having a target but, in the transport sector, he takes actions which guarantee an increase in greenhouse emissions. This minister is a hypocrite and future generations will not thank him, his government or this government's supporters for the actions that they are taking at this time.

We still have an opportunity in this Assembly to reject this short-sighted proposal. We still have an opportunity in this place to show leadership in transport planning by insisting that environmental and social considerations have to underpin planning decisions-not alliances with the big end of town. We could recognise the importance of public transport in meeting those environmental and social objectives by rejecting this more roads proposal.

We can recognise short-term pressures by supporting the upgrade of Majura Road and William Slim Drive. Residents of the inner-north suburbs have a legitimate concern about the current situation. We need to make a significant shift in how we are addressing these very confronting-and I acknowledge they are confronting-issues which will require social change.

When I read this report, I see two pages which support the major recommendation to go east. What is the rationale? The rationale is cost-and, according to this report, there is a maximum $7 million difference between the cost of the two options. This government

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