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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 5 Hansard (8 May) . . Page.. 1305 ..

Mrs Dunne: Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I ask for your ruling on whether or not Ms MacDonald was asking the minister for a policy announcement.

MR WOOD: I am telling you how we are administering these things.

MR SPEAKER: On the face of it, Ms MacDonald was asking Mr Wood what the government's position was.

Mr Corbell: Mr Speaker, on a point of order: as long as Mr Wood does not make any new policy announcement, the answer is entirely-

MR SPEAKER: He is not making any new policy announcement.

MR WOOD: I am reasserting what I have said at other times. I will tell the Assembly what the government proposes to do. A process is under way, set up by the former government, to consider whether we should move permanently to a 50-kilometre per hour speed limit in residential areas. That has been under way for seven or eight months, and it is a good process. To my memory it was supported by everybody in this Assembly.

I would ask that the process continue. We agreed with the Liberals. It was unusual for the Liberals to set in place a considered process. This is what that was, and we believe it should continue. At the end of this two-year period we should be in a position to make a considered decision.

Mrs Cross picked up some comments, which I have read, that came out of New South Wales and Victoria about results in other places, and we should take those into account. But, as we go through the evaluation process, we should take a lot more into account in regard to what is happening in our streets. For example, most of the residential streets in the ACT-not necessarily all of them-are fairly well separated from the main thoroughfares. We have got quite a hierarchy of roads. It is not a simple exercise to take what happens in New South Wales or anywhere else and translate that into what happens in the ACT.

More than that, in this trial we need to assess what is happening in the streets over a period-check whether there are more accidents and continue to monitor what is happening with speed-in a considered way. I believe there is a very strong reason to do that. If the Assembly wanted to go down this path, we could say tomorrow: let's go to 50 kilometres per hour. But that does not mean that the community out there will go at 50 kilometres per hour. We can say it, but it will not necessarily happen.

I put out a statement a little while ago that there was an average 1.8-kilometre per hour reduction in speed-1.7 in one aspect, 1.9 cent for another.

Mr Humphries: Is that good?

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