Page 571 - Week 02 - Thursday, 9 March 2006
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We did Kambah Village and the Jamison shops. We started Hawker, Kippax, Watson and Yarralumla. They all benefited from the investments of the previous government. I had hoped that Mr Hargreaves would talk about their investment in suburban shopping centres but he obviously had nothing to say on that matter.
As assets get older they require more attention. I wish to draw members’ attention to the car park outside the Assembly. Perhaps the minister, or whoever else might speak on behalf of the government, would like to tell us what the cost of resurfacing that car park will be when it is eventually done. I understand that the proposed cost a couple of years ago was something like $50,000. A year of two on from that it was $60,000 or $70,000. I understand it is now in excess of $100,000. That is the sort of delay we are talking about.
Let us talk about the roads in general. Let us talk about the five-year road program we had that sought to complete the set of strategic roads Canberra needed to give the city a road network that would serve the population into the future. The work we started has virtually been completed but we knew that more work would be required. Because of Mr Corbell’s mismanagement of the whole issue of the Gungahlin Drive extension, he failed to realise that there was only one viable route. Mrs Dunne pointed out quite clearly today that in 2001 the area between Bruce and O’Connor Ridge was so ecologically important that you could not put anything there. But now, because it is only a link area between two ecologically important areas, you can put a busway, a tunnel or whatever you want through there. That is the difference.
Mr Corbell’s change in attitude is very educational with regard to the loss of time, effort and money in building up this critical infrastructure. There is a lack of a broad view from the government about this issue. Across the government there is a lack of any interest whatsoever in the issue. We had the programs—look of the city and lakesmart. Mr Hargreaves talked about the cleaning up of some of the creeks. That is standard work that was started under our governance. To laud the standard of work, as Mr Quinlan did about his own white paper and to state the bleeding obvious, does not indicate to anyone that the government is interested in this.
Let us go to the road network and look at Pialligo Avenue. Pialligo Avenue cannot be upgraded. The airport remains isolated with a traffic bottleneck which causes all sorts of flow-on effects. Many of our visitors arrive through the airport and their first impression of the city is that it is congested and clogged and does not have a road network suitable for a nation’s capital. That is because of Mr Corbell’s mismanagement and the fact that Mr Wood, and now Mr Hargreaves, took all the money that was dedicated to new roads, road improvements, road upgrades or resealing and put it into the Gungahlin Drive extension. It is because of their monumental mismanagement, particularly through Mr Corbell, of the Gungahlin Drive project that we now have the problems.
Mr Corbell: I think the National Capital Authority had something to do with that.
MR SMYTH: Blame somebody else: it was the National Capital Authority’s fault. You have got it wrong from the start, Mr Corbell. There you were flip-flopping all over the place telling the Save the Ridge people you were going to do one thing and telling another group that you were going to do something else. You were caught out and ultimately exposed. But it is the people of Canberra who have paid the price. They have paid the price because the crowd opposite, who failed to put money away in the good
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