Page 1574 - Week 05 - Thursday, 11 May 2006
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influences of overseas oil prices, the price of diesel has gone up incredibly, and the price of diesel has had an incredible effect on other prices.
The government accepted my advice on how to address that funding difficulty, which was to try wherever we can to do things in-house. We decided to reprioritise funding for roads. It was my decision to temporarily apply the funds from the Pialligo Avenue, Tharwa Drive and Lanyon Drive areas to the GDE project. We do recognise that those three are priority projects. If the federal government comes up with a couple of quid and so can we, we will get on with them. In fact, I am fairly hopeful that something around Lanyon Drive might be able to emerge fairly soon.
It is interesting that Mr Pratt should say how much difficulty the Tharwa Drive people are going through. I have not had that level of complaint. I have had some, but I have not had the level of complaint that he indicated in his speech to the motion. Certainly, I feel for the people in the Conder, Gordon and Banks areas. We will address that as soon as we can, and they can have my assurance on that.
Mr Pratt extolled the virtues of the federal government, saying that they have this large bucket of money that they are hurling all round the ACT. Even he knows that the major highway funding that came out of the federal government stops at the border. Every other jurisdiction was named by the Treasurer in his speech as receiving money for major highway works. Where was Majura Road? It was nowhere to be seen. Where was the Monaro Highway? Where was the Federal Highway? Where was the Barton Highway? They were nowhere to be seen inside the ACT.
Indeed, the one that concerns me more than any is the Kings Highway. Mr Pratt lays at our doorstep the problem of roads to get to the defence headquarters. It is in fact sitting on the Kings Highway, the worst deathtrap, in my view, in New South Wales. Where is the money for that? It is nowhere to be seen. Where was Mr Nairn in trying to push that forward? He was nowhere to be seen. These highways stopped at the border.
I am grateful for the $5 million that the federal government have put into the Roads to Recovery program. Why do you reckon they could do that? It is because they have overtaxed the citizens of the ACT and everybody else to the point where they have billions of dollars to slosh around. If they want to slosh some money around the Roads to Recovery program, I will very gratefully receive it and we will apply it to roads in the ACT.
Mr Pratt talked about financial assistance grants. He ought to go and have a lesson in budgeting 101. FAGs are not necessarily applicable to roads. There is a whole stack of competing priorities on that. He also talked about funding priorities and wastefulness, saying that we are wasting things on the Belconnen to City busway. He continues to run this line like the $390 million furphy. He has not listened when he has been told that the money currently being spent on the Belconnen to Civic busway has been about preparing it for the time when we can actually build the thing. We do not want to pay for the retrofit of that particular facility at four times the cost, as we had to do with the GDE. We will do the work now and, when the construction funds are made available, then and only then will we do something. If that does not clarify it for Mr Pratt, I will get out some pictures and show him.
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