Page 223 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 15 February 2012
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her position, a little more arrogant, she does not think she needs to cave in to what constituents actually want. So it is for that reason that we saw Ms Bresnan last year, in November, going with what the community actually wants and why now you have Ms Hunter saying, “No, we can afford to reject what the community actually wants.”
Ms Bresnan also touched on bus lanes in general, saying that they will help transport-orientated development. I wonder where on the Barry Drive bus lane you would like to have this transit-oriented development. Would you like to cut into the Aranda bushland perhaps? That might be a great place. I look forward to letterboxing Aranda, saying, “O’Connor Ridge and the Aranda bushland are prime parcels of land for a transit-oriented development.” I think it would be superb. I would happily go and letterbox that to the good folk in Aranda that Ms Hunter supposedly represents.
It is a special year, this one. It is an election year. Because of that, it is possible that Ms Hunter may visit Ginninderra. I am not sure, but we will wait for the media release. I am sure it will happen at some point. And when she does, I just hope she is not coming back from the electorate at about 8.45 am. If she does that, she will be stuck in Ginninderra for far too long. She will be stuck in Ginninderra for a very long time in fact, because getting out of Ginninderra every morning is a very difficult thing to do. When you look at the road infrastructure for people in Belconnen, it really is quite substandard.
There simply are not the arterial roads that are required to service the population of Ginninderra, including Gungahlin, and then of course all the other traffic that comes from outside of Canberra or outside of the ACT from the north-west. Because of that, you have to make the most of the arterial roads that are already there. Making the most of Barry Drive will not be by having 217 buses using a stretch of bitumen, it would be by allowing just a few of the 27,000 cars which travel on Barry Drive every day to go in that lane if they are contributing to solving a problem by car pooling.
It is a very reasonable position that we are putting forward here, yet those opposite have no interest in doing this. I wonder what Dr Bourke would think of this. He is a resident of Aranda, a suburb which actually borders on Belconnen Way. I wonder what Dr Bourke would have to say about this, whether he would be supportive of allowing people to get stuck in the traffic jam or whether he would take the opportunity to free up their day for them. Instead, what we are seeing from those opposite is a commitment to their ideology that the car is a bad thing, whereas we on this side are committed to delivering local services to Canberrans, local services to taxpayers. We want Canberra to have the best local government in the country, and this initiative is part of that. (Time expired.)
Question put:
That Mr Coe’s motion, as amended, be agreed to.
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