Page 3440 - Week 08 - Thursday, 23 August 2012
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
this financial year the money runs out. The Greens welcome the significant new capital investment in this budget—$7.3 million over four years. But, on further inspection, it is clear investment for walking and cycling will actually be going down quite substantially. Firstly, there is no new recurrent funding for maintenance under this budget. When the funds from the parliamentary agreement run out next financial year, maintenance funds will go down by $1.6 million a year. So all those cracked footpaths are much less likely to get fixed.
Secondly, there is capital investment of $7.3 million over four years, but in the parliamentary agreement the Greens secured $12.5 million in capital investment. So capital investment is set to drop below what the Greens negotiated by $5.2 million over the next four years. The question is: how can the government expect to meet its targets for increased walking and cycling by spending less on works for walking and cycling? You could not have a clearer example of how the Greens have made the Assembly work for a better connected, healthier and more sustainable Canberra.
What is more, the government’s own survey data shows this is an area of high dissatisfaction. Canberrans want more to be done, not less. I remind the Assembly that active transport is still only a tiny fraction of our overall transport expenditure. Of course, investing in active transport is not just about the amount of money; it is also about how it is spent. The Greens believe cost effectiveness is the best way to choose projects, and we are glad to see the government now agrees. We look forward to the results of the new walking and cycling counts, and we hope this will be integrated into the government traffic models.
We would also like to see greater engagement with the community and with experts not only on cycling works but also on walking. I hope TAMS will work closely with ESDD in particular to reap the benefits of ESDD’s grants to the Heart Foundation for their fantastic active living project.
It is just as important to get the design of works right. We need to make places for people places where they want to be and which are easy to move around. We welcome continued investment in street furniture, like seats and bike racks, and in streetscape upgrades, but layout and design are not always great. Furniture in some places is tucked away where people seem unlikely to use it and in other places it is clustered where it blocks pedestrian and cyclist passageways.
Turning to trees, earlier this year the government released its response to the investigation by the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment into urban tree management practices in the ACT. The ACT Greens have a longstanding interest in urban trees, and it was the result of me as part of the ACT Greens raising this issue in the Legislative Assembly that the government established the commissioner’s investigation.
The government agreed fully or agreed in principle with most of the commissioner’s recommendations but deferred many actual decisions. Now the budget repeats that. It is a key priority for TAMS to implement the recommendations of the commissioner’s inquiry into our tree management practices, but it still does not make clear which decisions will actually be implemented.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video