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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2360 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

On transport, I am pleased that the ALP has funded some specific initiatives that will head us more in the direction of sustainability. Transport is one area of very definite change from the Liberals. I congratulate the government on its bravery in addressing the contentious and politically unpopular issue of parking charges. The inequity in having parking charges in the office areas of Civic and Woden but not in Belconnen or Barton has been around for years, but the Liberals were too gutless to do anything about it-I can see that they are taking a populist line today-despite the rhetoric of their understanding of sustainability.

However, rather than just imposing the same charges as currently apply in Civic or Woden, I think the government should do a total review of parking charges in the ACT and look at the equity issues, as there are currently so many inconsistencies in how parking charges are applied across the ACT. Some group centres, such as Dickson, Kingston and Manuka, have pay parking, but the other group centres do not. The days and times when parking must be paid for also vary across the city's public and private car parks. There is a need for a consistent, equitable and targeted approach to pay parking, and I stress that because I have noticed that in some of the response so far from the community legitimate concerns have been expressed about the nature of parking. That needs to be addressed thoroughly.

The extra funding for ACTION and the abolition of the zonal fare system provide a good balance to the increased parking charges. However, these hardly make up for the running down of ACTION by the Liberals in their flawed attempt to make ACTION run as a business and not as a community service for those people who cannot or choose not to use cars. The cycling initiatives in the budget are also welcome, particularly the commitment to the Downer-Woden on-road cycle link, which will become the backbone of Canberra's cycle lane network. Unfortunately, though, the funding for footpath and bike path maintenance will barely keep up with their continuing deterioration.

The big problem with the ALP's transport initiatives is their unthinking acceptance of the former government's traffic jam plan or traffic congestion road safety improvement plan, which was just a fancy way of saying that they were going to build lots of roads. If we are to become a truly sustainable city, we must start to wean ourselves off our overwhelming dependence on cars. Any effort to improve public transport or consider a light rail system will be continually and obviously undermined by this huge level of expenditure, which in this budget is $34 million and which over the next four years will total $135 million.

On the environment, the Greens welcome the additional $500,000 for nature conservation and related work and the additional resourcing for the Commissioner for the Environment, but this is really just catch-up money and more resourcing is urgently needed. The $150,000 allocated to weed control is no more than what has been spent in previous years. Of particular concern is the lack of additional investment in environment protection functions, including air quality, water quality, tree protection and other EPA functions. Weed control is also hardly keeping up with the problem.

The funding for energy efficiency measures such as the solar hot water rebate, the heater rebate and the cavity wall insulation scheme is a good move, as is the development of a whole-of-government energy report to analyse trends in energy consumption.

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