Page 1931 - Week 05 - Thursday, 5 May 2011
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or congestion problems. Rather, what they tend to do is to bring more cars to the road, limit the opportunities for building a sustainable transport network and entrench vulnerabilities to threats like climate change and peak oil. The Greens believe Canberra can be much smarter than this. We can find the real solutions to our transport issues with investments in sustainable transport, and a quality system of public transport is the only long-term transport solution.
It would be a great shame if the new Majura freeway came at the expense of light rail. The complete cost of a Gungahlin to Civic light rail line has been estimated at around $200 million dollars. The investments that could be made with $144 million in other infrastructure, such as bus priority lanes, and faster and more frequent public transport are also enormous. As the Treasurer said in her speech, fast and reliable public transport is the foundation of a well-functioning city.
We are pleased that $8 million has been put aside for both building quality regulation and building energy efficiency regulation. Clearly there is a need to ensure that our buildings will be safe and useable for decades into the future. Improving the regulation of building energy efficiency is also vital, and the Greens have been pushing for better auditing of energy efficiency ratings for many years now.
Residents need to be sure that they can trust energy efficiency ratings so they know they are getting what they paid for. People are keen to save energy, but they need a system that they can rely on to measure building efficiency. The Greens welcome the funds being put towards master planning for group centres, transport corridors and rural villages. The Greens called for more dedicated funds for ACTPLA to undertake more master planning in their budget bids this year, so we are very pleased that they are being funded to the tune of $4.2 million over four years.
The Greens are keen to shift our strategic planning and development focus to transit-oriented development. Developing plans with extensive community consultation for these areas is a key step in this process. The budget delivers some key items for more sustainable development, including $1.5 million for a feasibility study on infill development opportunities, $4.2 million for master planning for group centres and rural villages as well as transport corridors, and significant funding for transit ways.
This is a sign that the government is starting to move towards a better understanding generally of how infill development should revolve around transport corridors and a shift in the way we build new areas. We are pleased to see that the street tree renewal and maintenance program has been refunded, thus implementing the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment’s recommendations in her tree report.
We are also very pleased that $8.4 million will be directed to the problem of stockpiled building waste at the West Belconnen Resource Management Centre. However, we are disappointed to see that no funding has been set aside for any form of solution on reducing our organic waste going to landfill. Meanwhile, we will be spending $2.75Â million on investigating further landfills rather than focusing on how to reduce our need for new ones. It is particularly disappointing that we are actually anticipating a decline in recycling rates this year.
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