Page 111 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 9 February 2010
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Fiscal responsibility is one of our major issues here. The ACT government are in a situation of a budget deficit and I believe they think they are going to be in a budget deficit for seven years or so. I had thought previously that the Liberal Party were concerned about budget deficits and that they would think that it was a bad thing to increase the government’s expenditure. Clearly, obviously I was wrong.
I spoke earlier today about the impacts of delaying this on the government’s land release program. While I do not think that all land releases should be in greenfields and it would be great if we had a larger debate about housing affordability, I think that we really need to look at plan B if we are adopting a policy which is going to significantly slow down the land release program. Unfortunately, I think these are issues which the Liberal Party has not really looked at.
We have considered these road issues very seriously. I guess, if we were spending an extra $5 million, we would be looking at spending the money, from a transport point of view, more on things which would reduce road traffic. We would be looking at spending the money on cycle ways, on bus infrastructure in Gungahlin. We would be spending the money in a way, we would hope, that would mean that the two-carriage road that will be constructed will never turn into four lanes of traffic.
We believe that is an achievable objective and, if that happens, that will substantially reduce any negative impacts from this road. That is what I would really prefer to see the Assembly working towards rather than spending our time saying the government should have done this, the government did not consult well enough, blah, blah, blah. We need to look at reducing our car dependence, at changing how our transport system works.
I have spoken a bit about the safety improvements. Something else I would like to talk about which the Liberal Party does not seem to have recognised is this: wherever the road goes, it will have an impact on residents. One of the things that we have spent a lot of time talking to ACTPLA about is the plans for that part of Harrison where there is going to be residential development. We have been advised by ACTPLA that the proposed new alignment would still have houses close to it. Again, that is something which we did not appreciate in November.
It is coming down to a question of which bunch of residents should be closest to the road. It would be nice if no-one was going to be close to a large road but, given that it is the case that that will be so, then I have to agree with Mr Barr’s point that he made in the earlier debate that this current alignment has been in the territory plan since 2003. So there is some justification for it. It was very hard for us to feel that we should move it to another group of residents. I say very briefly that I think politics and planning should be for the large issues like whether we are reducing our car dependence, not the actual alignments of roads.
The Liberal Party has accused us of backflipping. I suppose what I would first say is that I have got a bit old to be able to backflip. I wish I could backflip. That is really the typical way that the Liberals would describe things that they do not agree with. As I said, the reason we have changed our minds is that we have new evidence. (Time expired.)
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