Page 2953 - Week 09 - Thursday, 18 September 2014
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Municipal Services, who runs the buses, is not sticking around for an MPI on transport. It is interesting that Mr Corbell only turns up late for it, if they want to make interjections. Mr Assistant Speaker, what will be the full cost? You look at me blankly because you do not know, and that is because nobody knows. Nobody has got an answer to what the operational costs are, other than Minister Corbell.
Minister Corbell, as we know, has a longstanding agenda that is pretty much anti-car and anti-parking and trying to force everybody out of their cars—it is part of an ideological agenda—and onto public transport. What I would say is that my view and that of the opposition are very different. We want to make sure that we have very good options for public transport and that we provide a good, efficient and timely service. But there is a reality, and that is that many people—in fact, about 90 per cent of Canberrans—choose to drive their motor vehicles. We have a different approach. Whereas this government is trying to instigate policies that essentially try to force people out of their car and onto public transport, we would like to do it a different way—that is, provide a better public transport system that encourages people to get onto it, rather than forcing people out by squeezing them when it comes to parking.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for the Environment and Minister for Capital Metro) (3.40): I am pleased to rise on this discussion this afternoon about the importance of getting priorities right for public transport. We heard from the Liberal opposition that, of course, their approach to getting priorities right for public transport is to provide more capacity for people to use the car. But the whole point of public transport is to make the transport system as a whole work efficiently. It is about reducing demand on the road network. It is about giving people transport choices so that they do not have to use the car if they get some better choices that they can choose from when it comes to public transport.
We hear the claim often from the Liberal Party that the government’s position is one which says that we are anti-car. That is not the case. I would simply draw Mr Hanson’s attention to the government’s transport policies, and my colleague the Minister for Planning will outline these in more detail shortly.
One of the key facts that he fails to acknowledge is that the government has set out some clear targets in relation to what should be the desired mix of transport modes for journeys to work, which of course is the peak time in the transport system. What is the level that the government sets out in our transport planning documents as its target for car use during peak times? In the government’s transport planning framework it is approximately 80 per cent of all journeys to work are projected to be by the private motor vehicle. The government’s own policies recognise that car use is going to remain the dominant mode in our city.
We know also that the current level of over 90 per cent is simply unsustainable. It is going to lead to more and more expenditure on roads and car parking at a time when the scarcity value of land continues to increase. We know that we need to give people more choices so that we can manage demand on our road network and make sure it works more efficiently for everyone. And we do that by investing in better public transport and having the appropriate land use policies in place to ensure that more
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