Page 2134 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 8 May 2012
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This is what we believe a good local government should be doing—focusing on the basics. We look forward to the opportunity over the next few months in the lead-up to the election to have debates on these kind of important issues to the community. If you go out and survey the community on what they want to see from their local government, I think roads would be high up on the list. It will be up there with other important issues like health, education and investment in other municipal services. That will continue to be our focus. That is our focus. But, unfortunately, it has not been a focus of this government for the last 10½ years.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Chief Minister, Minister for Health and Minister for Territory and Municipal Services) (3.18): I welcome the opportunity to talk about roads and the road system in the ACT and I begin by rejecting the allegations that have been made by Mr Seselja today.
This government does prioritise roads—road safety, road improvements, road upgrades, traffic calming and municipal services. I fear that over the next few months we are embarking on the “who is focused more on the local than the other person”; I sense that.
Governments have to prioritise and they have to balance a competing range of interests. We accept that the Canberra Liberals are car focused only and care only about roads. That is fine, and good luck with your campaign on that. The government’s transport strategy includes roads, but there are also other important elements to it, like public transport, walking and cycling, and they each form a very important component of balancing the priorities across government.
I would note that yesterday a constituent contacted me about how much we put into roads, saying that that we put too much into roads. Over the last 10 years the graph in transport for Canberra shows that 65 per cent of transport initiatives have been focused on roads, about 28 per cent on public transport and then a much smaller percentage, four per cent, on pedestrians, walking, and four per cent on cycling. The constituent was taking me to task over that.
You can read out the letters to the editor, as Mr Seselja has decided to do, and accept all of those as truth and say that we will have to send a roads crew out there immediately to upgrade those parts of the road. I think what happened last Wednesday in the Assembly was unfortunate in the sense that back in—
Mr Seselja: A unanimous vote.
MS GALLAGHER: If I was here; I was not in the chamber. I would have tried to inject some sense into the fact that the Assembly prioritised a road, despite evidence to the contrary that there were other more important areas across Canberra where traffic calming measures should have been prioritised.
I would draw members’ attention to a piece of work that was done by the Assembly. It is an older piece of work—it was done, I think, in 1999—which was looking at support for the traffic warrant system. As I understand it, there were three members
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