Page 1812 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 4 May 2011
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solution for Gungahlin. That having been said, the Greens strongly believe that the people of Gungahlin deserve a good transport system and we regret that they have not got as good a transport system as they could have had.
Firstly, we will go to Mr Coe’s motion. The first part is historically correct. It did have an earlier cost; the first part was initially going to be completed earlier and it is now going to be completed with extensions in June this year I understand. There have been issues with the construction of the GDE.
I was quite surprised by the things that Mr Coe called for, because basically all he is calling for is for the government to provide a series of pieces of factual information. Most of us use questions on notice for that rather than a whole motion, but I appreciate that the Liberal Party may not have a lot of motions and so maybe that seemed like the thing to do.
Moving now to Mr Stanhope’s amendment, again this is very factual. I guess the big advantage to this is that it has updated the information in Mr Coe’s motion and has in fact answered the things that Mr Coe called upon the government to do. So clearly from that point of view it is a superior motion.
I am not really quite sure why we are doing this. I think that the whole Assembly is committed to—I hope the whole Assembly is committed to—a good transport outcome for Gungahlin. The issues in Gungahlin are affecting the whole of north Canberra and it is clear that further work needs to be done on this issue. One thing that I regret that neither Mr Coe nor Mr Stanhope has mentioned is the ongoing issues down Northbourne Avenue. I understand the government has some funding for a feasibility study to do something to this major entrance to Canberra. I very much look forward to work progressing on that because we have got to fix Northbourne Avenue. We have got to look at the whole of north Canberra as a holistic transport system and fix the problems.
Both Mr Coe’s motion and Mr Stanhope’s amendment with updates are fairly factual, so I signal that the Greens will be supporting the amendment.
MR HANSON (Molonglo) (3.33): I would like to thank Mr Coe for bringing this important motion before the Assembly today. As he said, it is iconic—I would use the word “indicative”—of this government.
There is no question that you only need to say the word “GDE” and everybody rolls their eyes and they know exactly what you mean. What it means is essentially what this government stands for, and that is that you are going to pay more, you are going to get less and you are going to wait longer. That applies to the GDE in spades but it also applies to many other aspects of this government, be it the health system or other services that are being provided.
There is no question that the GDE is an important part of the infrastructure of the Canberra community and, given the size and shape of our city, which is essentially long and skinny, that that route that comes down from Gungahlin feeding into our city is vitally important. If this government had had the foresight to make adequate
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