Page 5150 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 18 November 2009
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(2) add:
“(5) the Redex trial final plans focused on one route;
(6) that Redex services travel on the same roads as existing bus services;
(7) that routes 51, 52 or 59 provide 50 services a day between Gungahlin suburbs and the city;
(8) that there are no ‘park and ride’ facilities at the Gungahlin Town Centre; and
(9) that a $1 million investment in public transport should be coupled with investment in:
(a) improving bus priority on existing routes to cut travel times; and
(b) consider an appropriate location for a ‘park and ride’ facility to service Gungahlin in line with plans for a Gungahlin bus interchange.”.
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (10.47): I think Mr Coe’s speech could basically be summarised as: $1 million is not enough to solve all the problems of the ACT transport system, and particularly those for Gungahlin. If he had just left it at that point I think you would have furious agreement in this Assembly. One million dollars is not enough to solve every problem. Unfortunately, he did not leave it at that. As my colleague Ms Bresnan has said, he went into opposition for opposition’s sake. I was really surprised that this time he went slightly further than political opposition for opposition’s sake. He described everyone who caught the Redex system as being absurd—all 1,398 Canberrans. I am really surprised to find—
Mr Coe: I didn’t say that. It’s a Stanhope tactic.
MS LE COUTEUR: You said it would be absurd for anyone to catch the Redex bus. I am really surprised that he is now opposing the constituents of Canberra as well. I thank Mr Coe for mentioning the agreement items which are relevant to this. The Greens regard bus transport and sustainable transport in Canberra as being a very important issue. As Mr Coe rightly noted, there were two very relevant items to this in our agreement with the Labor Party. One was about better bus frequency. The Redex trial is certainly a way of trialling better bus frequency. It is a trial. I very much hope it will be a successful trial.
I am particularly disappointed that the opposition does not seem able to accept the concept of a trial, doing something new. If we are going to have improvement, we need to have change and we need to have new trials. The other thing that was part of our agreement with the Labor Party was the park and ride facilities. One of those will be at Mitchell. It will service the people of Gungahlin and also the people further north, from New South Wales. Both of these items are very relevant to this particular trial and to the transport issues in Gungahlin, which is what Mr Coe’s speech focused on.
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