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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 5 Hansard (8 May) . . Page.. 1306 ..

MR WOOD: I said it was good. But, in fact, putting it in perspective, I was being optimistic and encouraging. If you think about it, it is an average 1.8-kilometre per hour reduction in speed when we set a 10-kilometre per hour reduction. You could say, "That's not very much. You said 10, and that is all you got." But it is moving in a certain direction, and it is important that we continue to move in this direction.

Let's take the community on board with us. We will be more successful that way. If we make sudden or arbitrary decisions, we are less likely to carry the community. The process that you set up is a good way to carry the community. If we see it through the two years, we can get a greater level of support.

In the interim, a review I put out recently, when this was announced by Mr Smyth, said that at the outset 63 per cent of the community were supportive. Six months on it was 70 per cent.

Mr Smyth: It is probably higher now.

MR WOOD: Let's build on that and take it through. At the end, if it all goes well and all the things fall into place, we will be able to carry the community with us.

I am a bit concerned that Mrs Cross and, I presume, the opposition want to pre-empt the conclusion of their trial. I do not think you have taken into account the factors I have indicated or a whole range of other significant issues that really ought to be considered in the trial. So it seems to me at this stage to be a fairly half-baked announcement on the policy. It is not the way the Stanhope government hope to operate; we would prefer to do it in a more considered way.

MS MacDONALD: Mr Speaker, I have a supplementary question. Minister, in light of what you have just said, what are these other issues that you claim the opposition failed to take account of in what you call a "half-baked, populist policy announcement"?

MR WOOD: There are a whole range of issues in the evaluation-Mr Smyth might know what was set out in the first place. Does the blanket 50 kilometres per hour include the school zones? Did you want 50 kilometres per hour around the schools? What about in some of the older suburbs?

Mrs Cross: We are not talking about the school areas. Come on, Bill.

MR WOOD: That is the way the document reads.

Mrs Cross: No. It does not.

MR WOOD: Okay, we do not take notice of what you write. Does it include major streets like Macarthur Avenue or Limestone Avenue? These are residential zones. Is 50 kilometres per hour considered preferable in those areas?

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