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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 1 Hansard (12 December) . . Page.. 136 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

transport technologies to determine the best solution to meet our city's needs. We will also investigate land use changes to improve public transport viability. This will obviously include consideration of improvements to the intertown public transport routes, particularly those parts of the intertown public transport that are yet to be developed.

We will also, of course, look at options for funding capital expenditure and operating costs; and also an implementation strategy which identifies the priorities and staging of public transport improvements. All of these things, Mr Speaker, will be done in the context of an overall transport plan for this city.

I am very pleased as the Minister for Planning to be bringing to this Assembly a commitment that this government will introduce an integrated transport plan for our city-the first time such a plan has been developed since self-government.

Mr Speaker, while improving public transport is important, the diversity of employment locations, retail centres, commercial centres, industrial areas and recreational facilities across our city means it is difficult to efficiently serve all of them through public transport, although considerable improvements can be made. There will still be a need to provide for private vehicle travel as well. My colleague Mr Wood will be outlining our proposals for arterial roads other than Gungahlin Drive that will progressively serve the residents of Gungahlin.

The new Labor government is concerned to ensure that there are equitable opportunities for people to obtain employment close to their homes. Again this is an issue that Ms Tucker has raised in her motion. The government is keen to see more employment opportunities within Gungahlin, so that Gungahlin residents do not have to travel so far to their places of work. To achieve this the government will be putting in place an incentives program to encourage Gungahlin as a centre for employment location. In addition, the government will strongly advocate the Gungahlin town centre as a location for future employment opportunity in any proposals that are brought to it. We are also, of course, pursuing other employment opportunities in Gungahlin by identifying and making available a range of sites to potential development proposals.

Ms Tucker has raised a range of other issues in her motion in relation to Majura Road and Gundaroo and William Slim Drives. These are matters I will leave to Mr Wood to address. What I want to stress, though, is that this government is interested in an approach that brings an integrated style of planning to transport for our city. We are working on a light rail. We have a commitment to fund a feasibility study into light rail and bus only lanes. A quarter of a million dollars is the government's commitment, and it is something we will be proceeding with. We are committed to an integrated transport plan. We will be moving to implement that. We are going to introduce a public transport option study to look at the opportunities for improving public transport. We are committed to an incentives program to encourage greater employment location in Gungahlin and a higher level of self-containment for that area.

We are taking all of these steps, but we also must recognise that the Gungahlin Drive extension is a part of the solution. It is not the only solution, it is not the end of the solution, but it is part of the solution. We will be proceeding as a government, in an open and transparent way, to build the Gungahlin Drive extension on the alignment we

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