Page 1569 - Week 05 - Thursday, 11 May 2006
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our territory. All people in the ACT use our public infrastructure, particularly roads, yet we continue to see priority projects being put on the backburner due to this government’s financial mismanagement. Only late last year, Minister John Hargreaves said that planned upgrades to Majura Road and Pialligo Avenue would be postponed indefinitely following the $73 million cost blow-out of the Gungahlin Drive extension. The minister also confirmed that “numerous other smaller roadworks” would have to be shelved to accommodate the GDE blow-out.
If this government were serious about improving Canberra’s roads network, it would have planned for the future and locked away funds for ongoing works to ease congestion on many of our major arterial roads, such as the Monaro Highway and Pialligo Avenue. However, this government has squandered years of windfall gains, has allowed the Gungahlin Drive extension project to blow out by more than $70 million, not to mention the delays in its completion, and has not developed a new roads program to plan for future years.
The five-year roads program implemented by the former Liberal government in 2000-01 has been completed, it has expired, but this government unfortunately has failed to develop a new program, a complete dismissal of the responsibilities that this government accepted on coming to power. It has failed our community and will continue to fail in this regard. But for federal funding, this government’s general ongoing roads program would be bankrupt.
There are some short-term possibilities for easing the traffic congestion that has been so prevalent in the airport precinct, to take one example, and between the airport and the city. The government should undertake preliminary work to attempt to find affordable solutions to traffic congestion in the area and work more closely with the airport about any road changes in that vicinity. That would not fix the problem; only a commitment to fund substantial roadworks would. Any insignificant commitment to fund additional roadworks in the area, though, has been put back by the minister. Planned upgrades have been postponed or they have been downgraded, and there is no evidence that they will not continue to be postponed or downgraded while this government fails to take control of its poor financial management.
The opposition believes that these roads do form part of the national road network, and the opposition has been making representations to the commonwealth, asking it to contribute in terms of its being a strategic road network that has impacts on the ACT’s arterial systems. The ACT government must act now; it has failed to do so to date. Amazingly, while we are seeing cuts to such projects that Canberrans demand, the Stanhope government has managed to continue to promote and is proposing to fund a Belconnen to Civic busway. Until we see an announcement to the contrary, we must expect the worst.
A better investment would be to ensure that our current infrastructure is up to scratch and to ensure that our community’s pressing needs for upgrades to existing roads and other infrastructure are met. It is unfortunate that this government would rather see our existing roads go to pot than take funding away from its grand visionary projects, projects that are not of a pressing community need.
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