Page 758 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 26 February 2013
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no other reason than to prop up a budget, beyond the ideological aspects, that is under pressure because of uncontrolled spending on wrong priorities.
Why should Canberra’s car commuters be penalised with fewer car parks and higher costs just to prop up a government that is inefficient and is poor at financial management? The government’s five-year-old parking strategy is a furphy because it has not yielded any progress. It is just empty words on now yellowing pieces of paper.
Why is that, Mr Assistant Speaker? It is because the ACT Labor and Greens coalition ideology constantly gets in the way of practicalities. The ideology is that the government wants more people to use buses. The practicality is that buses do not serve the needs of Canberrans. The government is blind to the chasm that is the breach between the ideology and the practicality, but ignores it in the hope that it might go away.
Even the government’s own parking supply options study of May 2010 tried to highlight this breach, this chasm, between ideology and practicality. That paper said:
It may be difficult for people who have childcare or other caring responsibilities and who must start later in the morning … to find parking spaces within a reasonable distance of their work destinations.
The government simply ignores the chasm in the hope that the Canberra commuters might be beaten into submission, finally succumbing to an inefficient public transport system that does not meet their commuting needs. I reflect on an anecdote of my own, Mr Assistant Speaker. It is very much akin to the approach of the former ACT Labor Treasurer who said, “We will tax them until they bleed, but not until they die.”
During the 2012 election campaign, as I mentioned before, the Canberra Liberals announced a number of initiatives to ease parking pressures on Canberra families. We promised to provide thousands more car parks across the territory. Around 500 would be provided in Belconnen town centre alone, with a further 100 provided at Calvary hospital. We promised to audit car parking facilities, costs and codes. We promised a better plan for park-and-ride facilities.
Just one example of the government’s failure in this area is the secure bicycle shed at the Mawson park-and-ride facility. I am told by observers that just one bike has stood in that shed since it was built. That bike has remained untouched for the duration. The bike shed at the Curtin bus stop on Melrose Drive displays a similar level of usage. How is that a public transport solution?
In the 2012 election campaign the Canberra Liberals announced that credit card parking machines would be installed in all large ACT government car parks. We, the Canberra Liberals, were prepared to make it easier and more convenient for Canberra’s car commuters, whereas the ACT Labor-Greens government is stuck in the past and seems to be trying to perpetuate the inefficiencies of the past. It is another method that it uses to beat commuters into submission, forcing them out of their cars into a public transport system that does not meet their needs.
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