Page 914 - Week 03 - Thursday, 19 March 2015
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but, of course, I remain cautiously hopeful that in a few years from now those patronage estimates will be exceeded.
This is what occurred on the Gold Coast. The light rail service there is carrying many more passengers than anticipated. It is very popular. The Queensland government has just announced the beginning of work on a second stage of Gold Coast light rail. Canberra could, I hope, live this same story: the first stage of light rail from Gungahlin to Civic is successful and popular and our attention turns to bringing this great public transport mode to other parts of our city.
I turn to the details of this particular motion. It seeks the establishment of a select committee on capital metro and for light rail to not proceed before the committee reports on March 2016. I have to say that it is a nice try by Mr Coe but I am not going to support this obviously political and partisan stunt. Just to put this in context, and this is important in considering this motion, I will quote the very clear position of the Liberal Party, which they trumpet repeatedly all around the Assembly and all around town: “The Canberra Liberals do not support light rail and will take every opportunity to try and stop this project.” Those are words from Mr Coe.
Nothing could be clearer. The Canberra Liberal Party will do anything they can to stop the progress of light rail in Canberra. They announced it repeatedly and proudly. It is why they attempted to block money through the budget going to the Capital Metro Agency. It is the basis of their opposition to the capital metro facilitation bill.
It is the subject of repeated motions in the Assembly. In case members have forgotten, I will remind them of a few. The Liberal Party’s May 2014 motion called on the government to abandon the light rail project.
Opposition members interjecting—
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Members on the opposition side, keep the noise down, please.
Mr Hanson interjecting—
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Hanson!
MR RATTENBURY: Their August 2014 motion called on the government to delay the project until some uncertain date in the future. In October 2014 we had another motion asking that the project be delayed. Then in November 2014 there was a new approach, with the motion calling on the government to cancel the project.
The February 2015 sittings brought an innovative approach, with two motions appearing from Mr Coe, one calling for the project to be delayed and another calling for it to be cancelled. Here we are today with a motion attempting to set up a committee to try to delay the project until it reports next year, just before the election.
This motion will, of course, be dressed up as being about transparency. We have heard those comments this morning and any opposition to it—
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