Page 5737 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 6 December 2011
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we equally should not underestimate our capacity to influence change and the need to work with our regional partners.
The ACT participates in a number of regional forums, and recently a revised regional partnership framework agreement has been entered into by the ACT and New South Wales governments. These agreements, as well as regular meetings, are very important and I do not think anyone doubts the importance of ensuring that we have a coordinated approach on issues that affect our whole region. We have an inquiry into the carrying capacity for the ACT and region, and we have had many people in to give evidence. We have become aware of a range of different forums and organisations that are working to improve planning and cooperation and collaboration across the region.
Ms Porter mentioned the Regional Leaders Forum. There is also RDA (ACT) that recently released their strategic plan, and there is the initiative put together by the ANU and University of Canberra, the Canberra and Urban Regional Futures group which is looking at some very exciting work about how we can highlight the issues that we need to be addressing together across the region. Already we do have a good level of interaction, and this is certainly something we should build on.
The Commissioner for the Environment completes state of environment reports for each of the surrounding regions as well as the ACT, and this is of course very useful for developing our response to the environmental challenges that we face. We are part of the Murray-Darling Basin and we have a responsibility to participate in the negotiations about the way water is used and to play our role as part of the region in conserving water and ensuring that water is returned to the environment to ensure the health of the river. As I said, the inquiry into the ecological carrying capacity is concerned with our role in the region and the resources available, and this has illustrated how much we rely on and are integrated with the broader region.
I would like to pull out a few issues and talk about them. One is transport. The Greens believe that that cooperative governance between jurisdictions is necessary to improve public transport and transport in general. And one example that we strongly support the ACT government taking action on is to improve that cross-border transportation between Queanbeyan and Canberra. Around 65 per cent of Queanbeyan city workers commute to the ACT and the fact that the vast majority use their private motor vehicle has a major impact on parking, congestion and of course on the environment. Yet each city’s public transport services generally operate as if the other city does not exist. Cooperation in service provision between the cities is becoming increasingly important as our populations grow.
We have advocated for bus priority measures for Canberra Avenue, and this was an issue we started pushing prior to the 2008 election. We are pleased that we are now seeing community consultation on Canberra Avenue bus priority measures occurring in mid to late 2011. One unfortunate thing, though, is that it remains unclear when and if these measures will be implemented. One positive feature of the priority signals and transit lanes is they can be introduced quickly and deliver immediate benefits. In our view, there should be faster progress to implement these transport initiatives. And the
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