Page 2483 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 13 August 2014
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(2) calls on the ACT Government to delay the light rail project until a time in Canberra’s development when the population and population density can sustain such a system.
Mr Hanson interjecting—
MR COE: Mr Hanson jokes about the repetition of this issue, but, unfortunately, this is no joking matter. When you have expenditure of perhaps $1 billion in taxpayers’ money on a project that simply does not stack up. Not only do we have perhaps $1 billion of capital expenditure going towards this project, but we are going to be taking on a liability as well. We are going to be taking on an annual cost for this project. With every other project in the world it seems, you spend a lot of money and then you can reap rewards later on. Well, not so with this one. Not so with the capital metro project.
With this project, we are spending a lot of money—in fact, the most ever spent in the ACT by an ACT government—only to take on an annual liability forever. For all time, ACT taxpayers are going to have to prop up a light rail system that is simply uneconomic and unfinancial all because of this government’s flippant political decision to go ahead with light rail at the expense of the ACT taxpayer.
We have spoken just in the last day or two about Minister Corbell’s emotional attachment to this issue. It is quite clear to all those who have been in this place how strident Minister Corbell has been on this issue. Even in the face of doubt and caution and scepticism from so many people, so many learned people in this space, Minister Corbell has arrogantly and stubbornly and irrationally gone ahead and said, “No, we are going to do it anyway.”
This issue in the ACT is by no means a new one. It has been doing the rounds for, well, perhaps 100 years now. However, Canberra has not been planned for a light rail system. It simply has not been planned for it. In fact, I believe Canberra may well be more conducive to a heavy rail system than to a light rail system. Perhaps if you could actually go from Gungahlin to the city in six or seven minutes at 120 kilometres an hour, or you could go from Tuggeranong to the city at 120 kilometres an hour in perhaps 10 minutes or less—eight minutes—that indeed might attract patronage. It may not; it still may not stack up. Again, this government simply has not done the assessments.
Do we have any idea about what alternative modes have been assessed by this government? Did the government actually consider a heavy rail system for the ACT? I am not saying that we should go ahead and construct a heavy rail system, but I do think we should be making wise assessments about spending taxpayers’ money, especially on a project which is the biggest in the ACT government’s history.
I imagine Mr Rattenbury is going to chime into this debate at some point today and say, “We spend so much money on roads and you never ask any questions about road projects.” As a matter of fact, we do ask a lot of questions about road projects, and it is usually because the government has mismanaged them. One project of particular
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