Page 3069 - Week 08 - Thursday, 7 August 2008
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so proud of providing $32 million. What do you get for $32 million? You do not get a lot. I do not reckon they had enough money provided to build it, let alone the capacity to actually deliver it on time.
The only thing I agree with Mr Smyth about is the professionalism and the capacity of Roads ACT in delivering. They have delivered this project under budget and well before time. Why do you think that was? It was because we provided the money to do it, and we had faith in them. I would love to see what would have happened when they got halfway through the project, because these guys opposite did not allow enough money to complete the job. They did not allow the money. When they had to be told, “We have got to get across Belconnen Way,” they would have asked, “How are we going to do that?” I know what they would have done. They would have put a flying fox across it. They would have stuck a flying fox or a ferry across it. That would be the go. They could have taken five cars at a time across it. Yes, that would have been good.
That makes about as much sense as burrowing tunnels through nature parks. I do not think they had the capacity to deliver on time. I do not believe they had the capacity to deliver on budget and I do not think they had the capacity to do anything else. What are they doing? They are really whingeing because this government re-announced something. It is already in the budget papers. We re-announced something and these guys got all upset because they were going to announce something. The whole reason we are here debating this MPI is that somebody’s pride has been injured. But at the end of the day there is one reality. That is that if this government is returned the road will be built. The road will be duplicated.
I said when I conducted the D9 symphony for the people of Gungahlin, “I will deliver you the road. I will build this road and the time for talking and mucking around is over. I will deliver the road.” And I did deliver the road while those people sat there and gnashed their teeth and wondered about it. They wondered about it, Mr Speaker. This MPI is an absolute joke.
MR MULCAHY (Molonglo) (4.21): The Gungahlin Drive extension and the processes surrounding its planning and completion are clearly important issues to the Canberra community, and particularly to the people of Gungahlin, in the northern part of my electorate. The nature of this debate has changed now that both major parties have committed to duplicating the road in the next term of government.
Let me say at the outset that I am not particularly concerned with who got in and promised this first. I think it was inevitable, because of the stage we are up to in the electoral cycle, that both major parties would eventually commit to duplicating the GDE. Who got there first is not really much of a concern for the residents of Gungahlin. I honestly do not think that they care two hoots as to who builds the road, as long it will be built. All the high school debating that we have heard this afternoon, and the shrill performance that we heard a little earlier, do nothing to impress the people of Gungahlin, who simply want the road situation rectified with the minimum possible delay.
It is impossible to have this discussion without highlighting that the road that opened this year was poorly planned. For a major infrastructure project to be outdated even by
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