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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2961 ..

Urban Services I do not think we will make progress. There seems to be an irrational fear of picking a technology and going with it. The government wants to wait and see if something new comes onto the market. It will then have another panic attack and a fit of existential angst as it tries to work out whether this technology is better than that, finds it all too difficult and it all ends up with nothing happening.

We have sat on the opposition benches for the past 2½ or two and two-thirds years watching this minister doing nothing about putrescible waste. There are other issues that we need to address in relation to NOWaste by 2010, such as how easy it is for schools, commercial facilities or even government offices to recycle effectively. In this place the recycling of paper is okay but the recycling of other wastes—bottles and things of that nature—is less than user friendly. It does not get cleared very often and gets a bit whiffy. It really is not groundbreaking or state-of-the-art. We should be doing more to address the issues and leading by example.

We have the ongoing saga, with $71 million appropriated over the next few years, of the building of Gungahlin Drive. We will be back here on Thursday morning trying to sort out yet another problem. Opposition members of the Estimates Committee believe that the time has come to build the whole of Gungahlin Drive. Let us not muck around. We are going to spend $71 million to build two lanes, all the flyovers and all the bibs and bobs.

Somewhere along the line we are going to have to spend another $20 million to duplicate that. If we do it now, it will cost us $20 million, by the government’s assessment. If we wait another 10 years, we will pay a premium, which is currently estimated at about $10 million. As road construction increases in cost over time, I expect that the premium will blow out significantly.

Urban Services’ analysis is that we will have a perfectly fine road into and out of Gungahlin for 22 hours a day. The other two hours a day are the really important crunch times—the times when people want to get to and from work in a timely fashion, but they will not be able to do it because, by the admission of Urban Services, the road will be too congested.

These are issues that this government should address. It is the view of the Liberal opposition that the government should bite the bullet and build the road—all four lanes—now.

Much has been said during the early parts of the debate about the budget on the government’s commitment or non-commitment to improve transport infrastructure. There has been a lot of talk. There is a nice maroon document with glossy pictures and blurred pictures that suddenly become clear—it is a theme of government publications at the moment. There are some very modest targets which are way out beyond the next election, none of which will be met if the commitment to funding and to do the work is not there.

The minister for transport is committed to doing something but I do not think there is the support of the budget to ensure that anything substantial will be done. In the budget outcomes there is almost no increase in the number of hours of operation of ACTION over the next financial year and a very modest increase in the number of passenger

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