Page 2131 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 8 May 2012
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We know that Tony Gill said that that decision alone—not to build two lanes at once—cost at least $20 million, and this is a conservative figure from the government. That was $20 million that was just thrown away. Imagine how that could have been invested. And we know that the total cost of the GDE is over $200 million.
We know, though, that there were other problems with the project. We know there was a bridge collapse on the way. We know there were massive delays. But we believe fundamentally that road building, road maintenance and road safety should be fundamental first order issues for the ACT government. But they have not been. The government have had their priorities elsewhere. They have been more interested in the artwork on the side of the roads than in building the roads themselves.
If you go out into the community you find it is something that particularly grates on them: they see their roads falling apart yet they see the government spending money on roadside artwork. They say, “If the government were to fix the roads first, if the roads were sorted, then we might be able to deal with them spending a bit of our money on the roadside art. But they have not looked after the basics.” That is why people get annoyed.
We know there are lots of local examples. At the neighbourhood level we saw last week how the government forgot about the residents in Fadden and Macarthur and others in Gilmore and Chisholm who use Coyne Street. They had no plans to do anything there; it was only because the Canberra Liberals drove this issue that they acted. The government had been warned of higher than usual rates of accidents and safety concerns, with calls for traffic calming measures—but nothing was done until they were forced to in the Assembly. We look forward to getting a better outcome for people in that area. What should have been self-evident to the government led them to merely install a few signs and nothing further, and it took a motion of the Assembly to fix it.
We had the Chief Minister in a statement noting the kilometres of road that have been resurfaced and all the work that has been done. We know that that kind of activity from this government tends to pick up in the lead-up to an election. People can expect a little bit more mowing than usual and they can probably expect some of the potholes to be fixed this year, as the Labor Party desperately hope to get another term in government. But if people look at the government’s overall record they will see what they inherited in 2001 in terms of the road network and what they have delivered in the context of a city that has been growing—and what they have delivered has not been good enough.
We hear of the local examples. Steven Hood of Fraser wrote to the Canberra Times in relation to roads in Belconnen. He refers to the poorly designed intersection between Florey and Southern Cross drives which some in the community have commented has not been upgraded for over a decade. Driving along the Karinga Drive from Fraser, I was informed that this oddly shaped road is the same as the original dirt road when Fraser and Flynn were developed. Coming from Spence, there is a badly designed intersection with Kingsford-Smith Drive and then there is another badly designed intersection with Owen Dixon Drive. Then when approaching the intersection of
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