Page 5093 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 26 October 2011

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(i) the Transport for Canberra strategy focuses on locating new park and ride facilities on Rapid (bus) transport corridors (such as the Red and Blue Rapid), away from town centres and areas where park and ride may compete with the short stay parking needs of local businesses; and;

(ii) the Government’s park and ride study in 2010-2011 found that sites at Well Station Drive/Flemington Road and Flemington Road near Exhibition Park would be viable locations for park and ride facilities for Gungahlin residents, and the EPIC park and ride will be completed by December this year; and

(d) that the management of parking is an important consideration in local centres, such as Yerrabi, and that the Government would be happy to work with any businesses experiencing problems with parking availability for customers.”.

MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (8.12): I foreshadow that I will also be moving an amendment. My amendment does not amend Mr Corbell’s, so I will not move it at this point. I guess you could say that Mr Corbell’s amendment is reasonable but inadequate. What Mr Corbell is saying is that, in his opinion, the government is doing a good job and nothing more needs to be done in Gungahlin. I would agree with Mr Coe that that is not the case. There are inadequacies in Gungahlin and more needs to be done. There are many improvements needed in Gungahlin as far as transport infrastructure is concerned.

As Mr Coe mentioned, probably the most major improvement required in Gungahlin is in the employment infrastructure. It has been a failure from a federal point of view under both Liberal and Labor governments. Gungahlin desperately needs a decent size government department out there to provide employment growth. Had that happened then a lot of the transport issues in Gungahlin would not exist because people would be located fairly close to their place of work. That is a major failure of planning in Canberra. I am pleased to see in this regard that the government has recently decided to put 500 ACT public servants out there. I regret that it took quite a few years—

Mr Coe interjecting—

MS LE COUTEUR: It has not yet happened, but they have at least said they are going to. What I do regret is that it took quite a few years of Mr Stanhope being asked question after question and him saying that, no, he would not do it. Finally, the government has decided to do that.

Another issue in Gungahlin is the transport of electrons. I am talking here about broadband. This is an area which, again, hopefully will be fixed shortly with the NBN, but it has not been fixed as yet. It is particularly frustrating for those people who moved out to the first suburbs of Gungahlin. I can remember the ads. It was going to be the town of the future. It was going to be the best connected part of Canberra. Those people must feel so frustrated.

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