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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Tuesday, 25 May 2004) . . Page.. 2157 ..

a spurious concern and the Assembly does not agree, the work will continue in the interests of the community.

That is fundamentally what we are paid to do here. We have to act in the interests of the greater Canberra community, having regard for the minority. This issue has been done to death; it has been considered at great length in many forums; and it is now time for action. In fact it has been time for action for a number of years. It is time everyone bit the bullet and got on with it.

MR PRATT (11.41): I rise to support this legislation. I rise to encourage the government to expedite the Gungahlin Drive project—a community need that has been unequivocally needed for decades. To look quickly at the justification for the building of this project, the 25,000 residents of Gungahlin have a fundamental need to see this road put in place. We have been through the detail numerous times of the two or three hours of daily peak-hour traffic at the moment in the Gungahlin area. We know that Gungahlin residents have suffered for quite a long time during peak hours, and that there is no solution to relieving that suffering other than by the building of this road.

We know that people have to get to work on time; we know that people are spending up to an hour to get into work; and we know that families, as they drive their children to schools around the Gungahlin and Belconnen areas, are entirely choked up in trying to get to those places. There is no question that the Gungahlin Drive extension is fundamentally needed.

In terms of the ACT there is a need as well. The Gungahlin Drive extension will clearly be the beginning of a road system project which will provide another north-south lateral route through the centre of the ACT, and that is a very important strategic asset. It will potentially link with the Tuggeranong Parkway. It has the potential to increase traffic flows through to the Tuggeranong Parkway and expedite significant traffic movements north-south through the ACT, as an alternative to other routes we currently have.

The Gungahlin Drive extension will provide for emergency services traffic to get through the ACT much more efficiently. We now know that police and emergency service vehicles trying to get north from the Belconnen region into Gungahlin cannot do so easily in peak-hour traffic. Even during non-peak-hour traffic periods a road such as the Gungahlin Drive extension will dramatically increase traffic movement and reduce the time taken for emergency service vehicles to move north and south, which is particularly important during the bushfire season.

I am quite concerned that we have seen a political campaign over months where the minority has clearly been holding the majority to ransom. I will go on to talk about what I see to be the failures of government to act in the best interests of the community on this project. This project is two years late and also it is two lanes shy of what is needed. We need a four-lane highway through the Bruce precinct, and the previous government promised that. They planned for a four-lane road. As time has passed the resources have diminished and that has now become not quite so possible.

Picking up on the points made by the Democrats and the Greens: while I too am concerned that we may be dabbling here in a process which may be seen to risk the rights of appeal of citizens, I believe in this instance that the risk is minimal. I believe there is

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