Page 1572 - Week 05 - Thursday, 11 May 2006
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Looking now at some other infrastructure matters, late last year Engineers Australia released its report card on the state of ACT infrastructure. The report card identified many areas of the ACT’s current and future infrastructure needs that were not adequately provided for. Take, for example, community paths, including footpaths. Engineers Australia found that 18 per cent of these paths required immediate attention. Not only was this immediate attention needed, but also Engineers Australia concluded that the ACT would need to allocate an additional $2 million per annum just to achieve the annual maintenance target of two per cent of the territory’s total path length.
Engineers Australia noted in relation to street markings and signs that a significant portion of these assets in the ACT are reaching the end of their design life. Many of these assets will need to be replaced shortly, and to do this would require additional funding of approximately $3.2 million. It is this inaction by the government that could be placing a greater threat on the safety of the community, as well as those issues I have raised pertaining to road infrastructure and road safety. We know from figures recently tabled in this Assembly, the December 2005 quarterly criminal justice statistical profile, that injuries and deaths on our roads had doubled in 2005 compared with those that occurred throughout 2004. That is a disturbing trend which I would hope will not continue.
In conclusion, I would have to say that in the good times, and this government has been blessed with some good times regarding inflows of funding, the government has not banked the money for ongoing road programs. When the previous Liberal government left office it left in place a five-year funding program. I stress that it was a funding program, not a strategic program for roads. It put that money there to run this program right through. That program has expired and we have not seen any evidence of a continuation. If there is, let us see it today.
I want to know how much money the ACT government has promised to appropriate over the next five years for essential ongoing maintenance tasks, road upgrades and road expansions to better service our community. I doubt that that is going to happen because this government has failed to ensure that its priorities go to essential services and essential infrastructure.
MR HARGREAVES (Brindabella—Minister for the Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Housing and Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (3.56): I must say that there was a reasonably decent little fishing trip at the end but, bad luck, there are no fish in the water, Mr Pratt. You will have to wait for the budget to find out what the government is going to do in the next financial year and onwards. I am not going to engage with you on that.
As members of the Assembly would appreciate, there are over 3,000 kilometres of roads in the territory and there is a wide variety of assets, ranging from stormwater systems to street signs. The management of the majority of these assets was handed over to the ACT government at the introduction of self-government in 1989. Whilst needing ongoing maintenance, the majority of our roads are in a satisfactory condition. Officers of the Department of Urban Services are continually working at maintaining and improving the condition of all our roads through the annual road maintenance and capital works programs that can be seen in the budget papers.
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