Page 2229 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 22 June 2011
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Our recommendation to this study was that our freight hub should be transitioned to a rail-based system rather than the currently proposed major air-truck freight hub. We would like to see Canberra plan for the future, not the past. In the future, trains are going to be more important than planes. This is where we should be planning. If we are planning any sort of freight hub, it should be a rail-based freight hub. I am not totally convinced that a freight hub is really where Canberra should be going for the future; we should be looking at a clean, green economy, and I do not think freight warehousing is a big part of that.
The other thing that the Greens are very concerned about from the eastern broadacre point of view is that we keep enough land in that for agricultural purposes. Food is very important. We have very little local production. We have some in the Majura Valley. We would like to see that preserved and, if possible, increased.
In the remaining time left to me, I would like to talk about Northbourne Avenue, because that is a significant part of solving northern Canberra’s transport problems. The first comment I would like to make is that I would really like to know what is happening with the Northbourne Avenue feasibility study. On the website it says that members of the community will be invited to comment on options identified as part of the study and that the consultation will take place in May and June. This consultation, as far as I can tell, simply has not happened.
We asked questions about this in estimates, and the timetable had not been updated. I appreciate that there was consultation with a small, targeted group of people—the community councils, Pedal Power and the like—but I am not aware of public consultation on this. As far as I know, there is still a closing date of the end of June for community submissions. The Greens have asked—we asked quite a few weeks ago—for a briefing on what is going on here. We have not been able to obtain one as yet. So I think there is a real issue with the Northbourne Avenue consultation.
That brings me to one thing that the government did do consultation on with Northbourne Avenue. I have in my hand part of the 2005 SMEC bus priority feasibility study for Northbourne Avenue. This was a study which, had it been implemented, would have meant some considerable improvements in Northbourne Avenue. It had a plan for building bus priority lanes and it had a plan to have a dedicated space for light rail in the future. It did talk about putting light rail in from the beginning, and I think it was quite positive about that, but whether you went with light rail or bus it had a plan for that. And it had a plan for additional space for cycling. This was in 2005. As far as I can tell, the government has not done anything to implement it.
That brings me to a concern about what Mr Corbell has said. Basically he was saying that it is not reasonable for the Greens to be concerned about Majura parkway because we can have it all: we can have a perfect public transport solution down Northbourne Avenue and everywhere else and we can spend a large sum of money on Majura Avenue. That is great as a best of all possible worlds.
One of the things I am concerned about is that clearly the government are aware of the issues with public transport. Just read this study or read any of the other studies that
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