Page 563 - Week 02 - Thursday, 9 March 2006
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their grand visionary projects, projects that are not of pressing community need. They are white elephants, really—memorials to themselves.
We have major problems with traffic flow on important road links like Canberra Avenue. It connects us to our neighbours in Queanbeyan who bring a lot of economic activity into Canberra. Traffic to Queanbeyan will increase once the new Defence headquarters are built at Bungendore. That might be a couple of years off but it is still a planning concern. But the government fails to forward plan for these types of important future traffic needs.
We are concerned not only about the lack of commitment to roads projects but also about the Stanhope government’s lack of commitment to road safety improvements. For example, apparently, according to the Department of Urban Services, there is funding in each year’s budget for only two road safety improvement measures. This might include things like roundabouts, chicanes, slowdown points and the like throughout Canberra’s suburbs. That is like one chicane and one roundabout on many of the 60 kilometres of through roads that we know carry a lot of speeding traffic. That is two per year. What a commitment! Given the large numbers of reports in recent years of fast driving along these roads, you would think that under this government these sorts of measures would be a priority. Obviously this is not the case.
This government needs to get serious about improving Canberra’s suburban footpath network. Late last year some less than desirable results for the ACT were revealed in the Engineers Australia Infrastructure Report Card, which said that Canberra’s roads and footpaths rated a B and that the government needed “to lift its game”. We often see complaints in the media and I receive complaints in my office about the rundown state of many inner suburban footpaths around Canberra. They not only look awful but they are simply not functional, especially where tree roots and large cracks have appeared. In some cases this has resulted in injury when elderly people have tripped, yet this government has clearly not put the safety of these people first. This is clearly a problem in the inner south and the inner northern suburbs where the tree growth is older, the footpaths are older and, of course, the residents are older. If the government does not do something, if it does not provide enough funding and set priorities in these areas, it will be a real recipe for disaster.
According to the engineers’ report card, approximately 18 per cent of community paths, including footpaths, require immediate attention, and an additional $2 million per annum is needed to achieve a target maintenance level of two per cent of total path lengths. However, this government has done the opposite to what is recommended to keep our footpaths up to scratch by recently pulling $200,000 worth of footpath improvement funding from the budget. That is a real sign of something going dreadfully wrong in the maintenance budgeting planning.
The infrastructure report card also points out many other areas where the government needs to improve its commitments. One area is in the performance of streetlight assets. In some of the older suburbs in Canberra these are currently below Australian and international standards. A significant proportion of street markings and signs are reaching the end of their design life. Additional funding of $3.2 million is required. In some cases some of our newer signs are being spelt incorrectly, and I refer to Canberra Times reports of recent weeks. That is not a good example to be setting for our children.
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