Page 2257 - Week 06 - Friday, 27 June 2008
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government to do some of the work that is needed in relation to those bottlenecks. It has been no secret to anyone who has lived in Canberra over the past few years that this was work that was urgently needed. It has been no secret that we were seeing real delays around the airport.
As with the GDE, where they have put out one lane and then some years down the track they will look to duplicate it, we see the same approach to the roads around the airport—we wait until the bottleneck has been with us a for long time before we start actually working to get rid of it. It is a ridiculous way of doing things. It shows absolutely no vision; it shows a complete lack of vision in terms of service delivery and infrastructure delivery by this government.
It is apparent to anyone in Canberra who has been driving in the last few years—you touched on this yourself, Madam Assistant Speaker, in your speech—whereas a few years ago a 40-minute journey to work in Canberra would have been a very, very rare thing indeed, we now see that anyone who has to go along roads near the airport or anyone who is subject to some of the other bottlenecks around Northbourne Avenue, for instance, would find that a 40-minute journey or a 30-minute journey to work is now a very common occurrence for tens of thousands of Canberrans.
Recently I had the situation where I was on the Barton Highway at the Mix 106 radio studios and I had to get to Fyshwick. I left at 8.20, and it took me 45 minutes to get to Fyshwick. That is not an uncommon thing. If you have to go through that central part or if you have to go near the airport roads, you are faced with serious delays. These are delays that we have seen coming and that the government should have seen coming. This government is always playing catch-up. They play catch-up with all of their infrastructure policy, as we have seen in other areas of infrastructure, most notably water. We are still waiting for construction to commence on a new dam. After all these years of drought, we are still waiting.
This government claims to have some sort of foresight. How long have we been in drought now? We have been in drought now for several years, and for several years we have had water shortages and been subject to water restrictions. Canberrans have been unable to plan for the future in terms of establishing their gardens, in terms of laying turf or having a patch of lawn for their kids to run around on. That has become something that people do not bother with any more because they just do not know if they are going to be able to water their grass.
Thousands of Canberrans have had to outlay significant funds to try and keep some sort of water storage in their own backyards just so they can keep their gardens alive through the imposition of severe water restrictions. That has been because this government simply refuses to have that foresight to look to the future and actually make decisions before there is a crisis. Under this government, we constantly have to wait several years—whether it is road delays or lack of water—before it will act and actually take the decisions to improve the situation for Canberrans. We see that in so many areas.
It would be remiss of me if I did not touch on one of the initiatives in this line item, and that is the $2 million initiative to improve maintenance of Canberra’s suburban
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