Page 2295 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 12 August 2014
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MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (12.07): You can see the emotional attachment brimming over here, the emotional attachment of a minister who has an obligation to get it right for everyone in this community, not just for himself and his own ego. The emotional attachment is there. It comes up in the way he uses the data that he presents. He says that 100 cities around the world with about 100,000 people have got light rail. What percentage of cities around the world under 100,000 is that? It would be minuscule.
If we are going to have a reasonable debate, let us compare apples with apples, because the minister then goes on to say, “Let’s go to Basel. Let’s go to Switzerland. The Swiss are good. The Swiss run like a Swiss watch.” He says, “It’s about the same population as Canberra.” But it is not the same population density. The population density of Basel is well over 7,000 people per square kilometre. Ours is what—500 or 600? Basel has 10 times the density. The minister forgot to tell that part of the story because of his emotional attachment to showing that he will get this job done. That is the problem. This is about personality. This is about the egos in the government instead of about the people of the ACT.
Let us get some of these population densities of the places that they claim support their case. You only have to go to what the Leader of the Opposition said when he was speaking about Edinburgh. They delivered half the rail for twice the price because it does not work. The people of Wellington, New Zealand have actually said, “No, we are not going to do it.” Why? It is because it does not work for them. You have to work out whether it works in our circumstance of a city that, in reality, is six cities connected by a set of freeways. Will it change people’s behaviour?
Let us compare apples with apples. If you want to start claiming that there are cities around the world just like Canberra, except their population densities are up to 10 times Canberra’s population density, then you have got a problem. Of course, the minister is getting cranky with people who dare question his knowledge of this matter. He talked about the parochial nature of some communities. We had an outburst, an absolute outburst, from Minister Burch at the Tuggeranong Community Council the other day where she slammed the council, attacked the council for the tone of their letter to the Chief Minister. “How dare you have a tone in your letter when you write to the Chief Minister! How dare you actually disagree with this government!” If you do, you are wrong.
The minister should apologise to the members of the Tuggeranong Community Council who turned up that night, most of whom were quite shocked by the approach that she took. Instead of saying, “Look, we’re hearing what you’re saying. We’ll take that into consideration,” we were basically told, “No, you are wrong. Your tone is inappropriate and the Tuggeranong Community Council should get on board.”
The Tuggeranong Community Council is there to support the people of Tuggeranong and their needs, their concerns and their issues. The people of Tuggeranong are concerned that this money will be spent on a route for which the case has not been made. The minister reacted to Mr Coe’s comments about the lack of consultation. The first question is: Who did you consult with, apart from Mr Rattenbury, over the route? What is this about?
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