Page 4846 - Week 11 - Thursday, 21 October 2010
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We now have the community expecting us all to improve and to extend the recreational shared paths and we are delivering it. It was this government that actually started to signpost them and started to have campaigns about them. I remember in the first year being congratulated by Pedal Power. I would like to return the favour. It was also Pedal Power’s lobbying over a series of years that actually got us in it and also Mr Corbell seeing how these cyclepaths could work well.
I think it was on his visit to Brisbane, in fact, if my memory serves me correctly, that he got that inspiration and brought it back. Of course, in the first year we found through some monitoring by Pedal Power that cycling had increased by 17 per cent. That is a huge increase when you think about it, and if we can continue that sort of thing that would be just fantastic.
I can remember what Mr Corbell said quite early in the piece when there was no conversation in the community at all. I do not know whether that was the media’s fault or the general community’s fault, but there was not a conversation out there when Mr Corbell started talking about it. He referred to the integrated approach to transport, forgetting this notion of Canberra being a car city. It had to be a shared city and we had to make sure we got more people on the buses. He came up with strategies to get more people on the buses as well as on their bicycles.
Why have we continued through every year of the Stanhope government to improve on our delivery in these things? Why is it so? It is because of our contribution to tackling climate change. It is not about giving people a fun ride to work. It is about climate change. It is about what happens into the future. What is it that we are actually going to deliver into the future?
I have to say that it has been an absolute delight for me and a source of great pride that I was able to deliver some small part of the vision that Mr Corbell came up with back in, if my memory serves me correctly, about 1999. That was when we actually first started talking about it in our caucus room. That is how far back this minister has been trying to convince his colleagues that this is the right way to go. He has done so and you have seen it manifest itself in our budgets over successive years.
Madam Deputy Speaker, this vanguard legislation provides our community with further opportunity to reinforce our commitment to what type of future we bequeath to our children. We often say in this place that the reason we are here is to give our kids a better opportunity than we had when we were kids. If we can do that, we are successful. The same thing has to apply to our environment, except that we have an added burden. We not only have to make sure we leave it as pristine as we can when we go; we also have to repair the damage that our predecessors have done to it. I applaud this legislation.
MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (11.25): I rise in support of the Climate Change and Greenhouse Gas Reduction Bill and the 40 per cent target. It has taken years of campaigning from the Greens and many community groups to get to this point, and it should be a very proud moment for our Assembly.
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