Page 2248 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 22 June 2011
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staffing issues; it is about having to find transport corridors; it is about having to find transport routes. But it is also about the infrastructure. I wait to hear from Mr Corbell how he intends, as he has stated, to improve the reliability and frequency of public transport without investment in public transport infrastructure—just going along with what we have now, a single-mode public transport system with decreasing patronage. It is about the overall proportion of funding and attention that you give to roads and car transport compared to sustainable transport. It is no surprise that we are not achieving any sustainable modal shift even if the government is entrenching this unsustainable path for public transport.
In terms of our motion, what is wrong with having an independent expert scrutinise this project in relation to sustainable modal shift and all those other issues which we have raised. I presume it is because they know that it will damage modal shift targets, our greenhouse gas targets, and that the government are not going to achieve them. We have to keep pointing out, it seems, that we have a 40 per cent reduction target here in the ACT. Given that transport contributes significantly, what are the government going to do to address this?
Also we have got our modal shift targets. What are they? What are we going to do about that? What about public transport patronage? Again, we are getting nowhere on this and we do not have any answers.
I want to go to one of those reports. I mentioned we have had a number of reports. We had the Infrastructure Australia bid from the ACT government on light rail, which Mr Rattenbury mentioned. What has happened to that bid? Is the government going to promote that as a key bid, as something that it sees as a priority? Again, we will not hold our breath on that.
Mr Corbell mentioned the Gold Coast light rail proposal. What a shame that the ACT government did not see fit to lobby for the ACT light rail bid for us to have that sort of system here in the ACT.
Let me go to Mr Coe. Again we see repeatedly from Mr Coe that he does not listen to what we say or does not appear to have read the motion. What the Greens have said—and I will repeat it again; it has been repeated a number of times today—is that we do not believe that spending $144 million of taxpayer funding with no scrutiny on a highway is appropriate. We have agreed that upgrades are required around safety and addressing bottlenecks and peaks.
Mr Coe and Mr Hanson dragged out the usual rhetoric of the anti-car Greens. What a surprise! Forcing families—and this is a point we make—to have to have more than one car and giving them no other option than to drive to work or school increases significantly the costs for families, particularly those living in outer suburbs. Mr Coe just uses the usual lines rather than saying how he and the Canberra Liberals propose to address congestion in the future and population growth. As always, it is a policy-free zone. Let us hear the Canberra Liberals’ policies on public transport and sustainable transport.
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