Page 3577 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 18 August 2010
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To suggest that there has been poor planning is wrong. To condemn us for poor planning is wrong. If it is insufficient in your view, then that is fine with me. If you have suggestions to make, that is fine with me. But to condemn this government for poor planning is just not on. It is wrong.
I heard earlier in the debate—I think it was today; it may have been yesterday—Mr Seselja saying that the federal government has put no money into roads in the ACT. That is actually wrong. At the intersection of, I think it is, Morshead Drive and Majura Road, part of the airport road infrastructure, the federal government put in—
Mr Hanson: You can think of one example?
MR HARGREAVES: Just be quiet and learn something, will you? The federal government put in $50 million. That is not nothing. They put $50 million in and then we matched it. And the airport contributed, I think, between $4½ million and $5 million to do that. We also did our share, the ACT did its share, to do the Lanyon Drive duplication. It was this government that did the Tharwa Drive duplication, not the half-baked measure that was going to be provided.
Mr Coe: How did the bridge go?
MR HARGREAVES: Mr Coe scoffs but the simple fact—and you cannot escape this—is that people were driving on the GDE. They were actually driving on it—maybe not as quickly as you would like, but they were driving on it. They were actually on it. It was this government that actually got it to a stage where people could use the thing.
The motion says:
… when construction work interrupts the pedestrian and cycling networks, there are often insufficient substitute routes established …
Nobody would disagree with that. But let me tell you, Mr Speaker, before this government came to office there were no cycling networks being provided on the roads. If you have a look at the bit of work between Yarralumla and Mount Stromlo, what is going on there? An on-road cycle path to keep the cyclists safe. There is no recognition in any of this motion of that particular piece of work, and it is expensive. There is no recognition in here at all.
Certainly, providing people with alternative routes is a challenge. Of course it is. But I defy anybody in this chamber to come up with a road or a cycle path network that can go around everything in every single case. But the mere fact that they are trying to avoid roadworks means that there is an improvement taking place. There is no recognition in here that what you are saying is: “You do not have a substitute route to go around what you are doing.” We are actually doing something. There is nothing in there.
Both the amendment and the motion seem to indicate that our infrastructure and this government are substandard, and I reject that absolutely. We have put enormous funds
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