Page 1057 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 21 March 2012
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Ms Bresnan in her remarks said a couple of things. She said that the Canberra Liberals do not support public transport. To be honest, we do not support the way $85 million is being spent in ACTION at the moment. It could be spent much better and you, Mr Assistant Speaker, I think, know that. I think Ms Gallagher knows that. I think Mr Corbell knows that. Even Klaus Pinkas probably knows that deep down inside. We all know that that $85 million could be spent better. It is going to take some firm leadership and it is going to take some tough decisions, but we have not seen that yet. I have no confidence, in spite of a glossy document being left on Monday or Tuesday, that we are going to be seeing it any time soon.
Ms Bresnan also had a go at me for saying that Canberra was designed for the car and that I even said that Walter Burley Griffin designed Canberra for the car. Ms Bresnan, you ought to get your facts straight. I think you will find that Walter Burley Griffin did design Canberra after the invention of the car. He designed the wide boulevards for cars. He designed the many great streetscapes we have bearing in mind that automobiles would be driving down the middle of those streetscapes. Ms Bresnan might want to get her facts straight, especially as we approach the centenary of Canberra. She might want to look at some of the very good publications put out by the centenary of Canberra unit and have a look at the information there. I think she will benefit from that education.
We also heard Ms Porter talk about her testing. She is a bit of a road engineer; she moonlights as a road engineer. A bit like another member of this place who moonlights as a recorder of interjectors, we have Ms Porter who moonlights as a traffic engineer. She can measure the distance from Hawker to the city as good as the next person, and she said 18 minutes was the average journey—an average of 18 minutes to go 13 kilometres. If Hawker is one of the near suburbs and you do not use the whole of William Hovell Drive, particularly the part that is not duplicated, perhaps the journey might take a little bit longer.
It was in 2003, a year before Ms Porter was elected to this place, that the ACT Labor government announced the duplication of parts of William Hovell Drive. Ms Porter may like to claim that she somehow did this. I am sure she has. However, it was in 2003 that they announced that they were going to duplicate some of that road. In actual fact, it was in a press release whereby the Chief Minister said that $7 million would be contributed to the project. He said, “Belconnen residents that work in the city are the big winners of the ACT government’s $7 million duplication of William Hovell Drive.” Unfortunately, so many people in Belconnen and Gungahlin are the big losers at the moment—the big, big losers.
Mrs Dunne: Because it was half a duplication.
MR COE: As Mrs Dunne just said, it was half a duplication. There is much more work that needs to be done there and across so many other parts of our city. The fact is that if you want to get around this city with ease and you want to remain productive, you have to use a car. That is just a fact. We can pretend that that is not the case. Ms Bresnan can say it is negative to say that Canberra was designed for the car, but it is a fact. If you are living in Macgregor, Dunlop, Holt or Higgins and you have got to drop
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