Page 1811 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 4 May 2011
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extension. I very strongly remember the tram outside Canberra Centre, and hopefully some other members do.
Mr Barr: I used to catch that. It was a bus, yes.
MS LE COUTEUR: No, it was a tram. Village Building Company brought up this tram to show us what we in fact could have for Gungahlin. This was shortly after self-government. It was during one of the early minority Labor governments.
Mr Barr: I wasn’t old enough either.
MS LE COUTEUR: Yes, I know, Mr Barr; you were not involved in it. I cannot remember exactly who was the Chief Minister, but—
Mr Barr: I remember there was a bus that used to look like a tram.
MS LE COUTEUR: No, I thought it was actually a tram, but I should not be indulging in this. But, if you remember back, Bob Winnell, who was and still is the CEO of Village Building, put forward a proposition to the ACT government and he basically said: “This is a wonderful new space, Gungahlin. It is not that far away from Civic. What would work really well in the spirit of what Walter Burley Griffin proposed would be light rail.” And he said, “I will fund the light rail from Civic to Gungahlin.”
It is, in my opinion, one of the big disappointments in Canberra’s urban development that that was not taken up. If we had had light rail from Civic to Gungahlin I think we would be having some considerably different conversations about urban development and about transport policy in the ACT. At the time, I was very involved with the Australian Conservation Foundation and I was part of the steering committee that employed Professor Peter Newman from Western Australia to do a study on sustainable Canberra development. That strongly found that light rail would be a very positive solution for Gungahlin.
There are many reasons why we thought it was a good idea, but one reason why the residents of Gungahlin deserve better than what they have got, why they deserve light rail, is peak oil. Peak oil was an issue back in the early 1990s, late 1980s, when these decisions were being made and it is even more of an issue now. I was watching Catalyst last week and it was speculating that peak oil had already been reached and it was possibly the cause of the GFC. Whether or not it has exactly been reached or not, it is clearly going to be here soon. So what the residents of Gungahlin deserve is a transport option which is not totally dependent on abundant cheap oil supplies. Light rail, which is what the Greens and the conservation movement were proposing, was an option that would have provided this.
Also I would point out that the local environment deserves a lot better. Gungahlin Drive extension, as is well known, has put a freeway through native forest woodland and grassland close to the centre of Canberra. It went through four key nature reserves: Kaleen grasslands, Bruce and O’Connor ridges and the Black Mountain nature park. It has been a continuing disappointment that this has been the primary
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