Page 2293 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 12 August 2014
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Canberra-based firm that has undertaken this work. I have seen no analysis whatsoever from them to back up that defamatory claim, and I would be delighted to see them make such a claim outside this place. We know there is strong support for this project.
We had Mr Coe say, “There’s been a lack of consultation about this project.” Where has he been for the last six weeks? For the last six weeks there has been a detailed community consultation program that has reached along the corridor from the city to Dickson and Gungahlin. We have had a shopfront presence nine to five throughout the week here in the city centre. We have had weekend information stalls at Dickson and Gungahlin on repeated occasions, and the government has also asked the Capital Metro Agency to go down and engage with other parts of the city—south of the lake, for example, into Erindale, into Tuggeranong—as a way of answering people’s questions and engaging with them about this important project.
It is a city-building project and it is a project of significance not just to the inner north, not just to Gungahlin, but to our city as a whole. What we are seeking to do is to lay the foundations for a genuine rapid transit, highly efficient, effective and well-patronised public transport system for our city.
We know the experience of other cities speaks to the success of these projects. The article that I referred to earlier from Professor Norman, Professor McMichael, Professor Newman and Professor Steffen highlighted that it is not simply a function of size that dictates the success or viability of these projects. They made the observation that there are many cities around the world, including small cities, that are investing in light rail right now. 118 cities around the world with populations under 150,000 are investing in light rail, and Canberrans understand these arguments.
We have heard the criticism of risk. The government has undertaken significant work to address these issues of risk. The PPP framework, should the government agree to proceed with that framework, will give us absolute certainty around cost, because there will be a competitive tender process where those commercial consortiums will have to deliver a number around what is the cost for the delivery of this project. The government will have a choice as to whether or not to accept that absolute number. So to suggest that the costs are uncertain, to suggest that they are going to change once a contract is entered into, is simply false and simply misleading.
In conclusion, I received the other day some correspondence from a constituent who kindly forwarded to me some correspondence he had sent to the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Hanson. He had been prompted to write to Mr Hanson following a letterbox drop from Mr Hanson, and particularly the section in his letterbox drop about light rail. I will quote from the correspondence that my constituent sent to Mr Hanson:
It is about time that the Liberals took action on public transport seriously, and in what is common words for your side of politics—
this, of course, being addressed to Mr Hanson—
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