Page 202 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 November 2012
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These are all real issues. They should not be discounted by Mr Rattenbury or discounted by Mr Gentleman. These are real issues that need to be addressed by a government that is serious about concentrating on core local services.
Mr Rattenbury also addressed the benefits of the light rail network. If he honestly thinks that the light rail network is going to take a significant number of cars off the road between Gungahlin and the city, I think he is having himself on. How many people are actually going to live within walking distance of a light rail stop, a light rail station?
If the light rail gets built, it goes from Gungahlin Marketplace down Flemington and then straight down Northbourne. That is not going to do much for people who live in Palmerston. It is not going to do much for people who live in Nicholls. It is not going to do much for people who are in Ngunnawal or in Casey or in Amaroo or in Forde—it goes on and on and on.
The fact is that this is all about an ideological crusade. It has got nothing to do with improving services for the people of north Canberra, the ACT—or Gungahlin residents, who are supposedly the beneficiary of this scheme.
Mr Rattenbury says he is more interested in sustainable modes of transport. Let us not forget that this is a government that is spending $123 million a year on buses that only eight per cent of Canberrans use. As I have said many times before in this place, I believe that of that eight per cent that are using buses many are doing so because they have to, not because they want to. This government has an obligation to improve the bus system, not to simply spend more money willy-nilly. It has to spend that money properly. There is nothing sustainable about a public transport system whereby it costs $47,000 every single day for empty buses to travel 17,000 kilometres every single day.
To put that in perspective, under this regime you have got empty buses going 100,000 kilometres every weekday or five million kilometres a year. It is absolutely staggering. And, rather than actually trying to fix the bus network, we have Mr Rattenbury on his ideological crusade to spend more money on another issue, without fixing the existing infrastructure, without delivering upon the existing services which are so substandard at the moment. As Mr Hargreaves once said in this place, with light rail you run the risk of replacing the most profitable and best aspects of the bus system with an unprofitable and inefficient light rail system. That is what this government is embarking on.
Yes, there is merit in looking into light rail, but we think there is a lot of merit in looking into it before committing billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money. This government has gone for an ideological crusade rather than a tangible solution for the people that elected it.
I do hope that the Labor government implements our policies. We think there is much capital expenditure that needs to be spent appropriately, including on William Slim, Athllon and Horse Park drives. We do believe that the street sweeping program
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