Page 3974 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 30 October 2013
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flats as an opportunity—no mention whatsoever. The proposal only has a paragraph or two tagged onto the bottom of an earlier section. If this is true, it is all pretty sloppy. I am keen to get the government’s response to this analysis.
Of course the opposition supports this development and implementation of the city plan, but it is a two-pronged attack. One is the development, two is the implementation. If it is going to be another document that either does not get implemented or is used to validate or justify the government’s past decisions or pet projects then it will not be a worthwhile process.
I, for one, am keen to see Lake Burley Griffin and, indeed, all lakes across Canberra used more. I think they are tremendously underutilised lakes at present, and I think we should be having a mature discussion about whether we do want to have motorised craft on the lakes. This should not be a taboo subject. Let us have an informed, mature, professional discussion on this matter. It may well be that there is some sort of consensus that the community can come to with regard to some sort of concession whereby all stakeholders are happy.
Mr Rattenbury mentioned the mature trees on City Hill, which are lovely. There are mature trees up and down Northbourne Avenue which are lovely, well in excess of 500, from my counting, which will have to be removed for light rail. That may well be something that is worth while. That may well be something that this government says, “On balance, let us rip up those 500 trees because we are going to get a better benefit out of it.” However, this government should be honest about that.
I do not think they can be in this make-believe fantasy land whereby they think they can put light rail down the guts of Northbourne Avenue without chopping down the surrounding trees. By the time you excavate and rip up all the roots, by the time you rip up the irrigation system, by the time you put in overhead high-voltage wires, I do not think you have got much of a chance of the Eucalyptus elatas all the way up and down there actually surviving. So the ones that are not chopped down because they are directly in the road—the ones that are within two metres of the high-voltage power lines, the ones that overhang the power lines or the ones that get ripped up during construction—will surely die because of the increased activity around.
That may well be worth while, but this government have to be honest about what their intentions are with this very extravagant light rail project which to date they have made a very poor case for. And it is interesting they should make such a poor case because of course I believe it actually suits some people’s purposes. It is well known that there are some people opposite that are not supportive of the light rail project. It is well known that there are some directorates in the ACT government that are fighting to stop light rail, that they are not cooperating with the various people who are advocating for light rail. In actual fact it is well known that there are people very high in the ACT public service that are going around town saying this should not happen, there are other priorities, there are better things.
I imagine Shane Rattenbury, Minister Rattenbury, must be getting pretty annoyed with Minister Corbell and the dodgy sell job he is doing on this light rail because I think it is fair to say that the vast majority of people like the idea of hopping on a tram.
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