Page 544 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 5 March 2008
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The ill thought-out, slap-dash plan to turn the lake foreshore into a car park is an example of the lack of forward thinking and knee-jerk mentality of the Stanhope government. This car park has already turned a 10-minute journey across Commonwealth Avenue bridge into a 20-minute push and shove nightmare, as everyone jostles their way out of this so-called car park, at 5.30 daily. Again, it is an example of the overburdened road system, not helped by the slashing of commonwealth funding.
We have traffic at a standstill on every major arterial road in the territory during peak times. Anecdotal evidence suggests that our commuting time into Civic has doubled in the last few months. And what does the Stanhope government do to alleviate these problems? They spend time and money on unnecessary artworks for the black hole that we call the Gungahlin Drive extension.
We are a far cry from the serene grand city that Walter Burley Griffin had envisaged to be the nation’s capital. While we are at the mercy of the commonwealth in a lot of areas, it is incumbent upon the local government of the day to counter the impact of federal government cuts, to drive a hard bargain to increase federal funding and to exercise vision and forethought when it comes to basic infrastructure, upkeep and planning. Our roads and our basic infrastructure are approaching 40 to 50 years of age, and these issues must heavily depend on commonwealth funding assistance.
Let me now respond, if I may, please, to Mr Stanhope’s comments about the Howard government’s impact on Canberra families, which he lashed the chamber long and hard with before lunch. The Chief Minister criticised the federal Liberal Party about the impact on ACT families. He laments federal government policy and of course exaggerates the federal government’s role in previous years. He totally ignores the role that his government has played in the impact on Canberra families, and I will return to this matter shortly.
Mr Stanhope opened up this debate by concentrating on the impact of government policy on ACT families. He opened it up but he failed to do so with balance and of course he fails to sit here now to participate in the debate. You might just argue that the federal Liberal government took its eye off the ball in respect of interest rates and inflation in the last couple of years. You might, but you would probably be fairly tough even in going that far.
But to condemn that government, the Howard government, as the total cause of such an impact on the ACT is both dishonest and simply a case of Howard hating. To not recognise that the federal Liberal government, in its first nine years at least, brought greater prosperity to Canberra families and indeed continued that prosperity in their years 10 and 11 and in fact not to recognise that Howard reversed the macro damage rent upon our community in the Keating years is a gross act of dishonesty on the part of Mr Stanhope.
Where do we start? Howard brought interest rates down to give more Canberra families access to borrowings and to be able to afford to buy a house. Secondly, Howard brought unemployment down and put more Canberrans in jobs, to make many more Canberrans prosperous, to give more Canberrans, therefore, a fighting
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