Page 2560 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 11 August 2015
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debate over the course of the next year. I note that it has been nearly three years since the last election—nearly three years since this Labor government made a commitment to build light rail—and still there are very few alternatives on the table.
Mrs Jones: You also promised the duplication of Horse Park Drive at the shops at Gungahlin, and that hasn’t happened yet.
MS FITZHARRIS: We are delivering on that promise to duplicate Horse Park Drive and Gundaroo Drive. It will be well advanced and underway as we head to next year’s election.
I look forward to some alternative being put on the table so that this community is better served by the people that seek to represent them in this chamber. The opposition should provide an alternative and not do what their federal counterparts do, because certainly it appears it has come back to bite them as they take on the responsibility of governing and making decisions and investing the community’s tax dollars into projects that plan for the future. Capital metro stage 1, Civic to Gungahlin, does exactly that.
MR COE (Ginninderra) (12.00): It is interesting to get the same old lines from those opposite. We had Mr Corbell’s rebuke of Mrs Dunne because she might have a different opinion now than she had then or there be different circumstances now to what they were then. But in this sort of righteous attempt from Minister Corbell to come out and say, “It’s wrong to change your mind,” it would be wrong to not cast back our eyes to Hansard from a few short years ago, Minister Corbell. Who was it, I wonder, who said:
Light rail and buses can deliver exactly the same level of service. We argue, and the government’s studies back this up, that buses provide a greater level of flexibility. For example, they avoid the need for interchanging. With light rail, you are predominantly required to interchange. Light rail cannot service suburban Canberra. Light rail can only service trunk routes. So, as soon as you put in place light rail, you are requiring everyone who comes out of a suburb to interchange. You must interchange to get onto light rail. You must get off a bus and get onto the light rail.
Madam Deputy Speaker, they are wise words, are they not? They are wise words from none other than Minister Corbell just a few years ago. Before he stands up in this place and casts judgement on Mrs Dunne, albeit she was simply asking for further studies in this space, Minister Corbell should have a look at his own record and at exactly what he has said in the past before the 2008 election and, indeed, what they said before the 2012 election.
Does anybody actually believe if they had a majority in their own right we would be going ahead with light rail? Does anybody in Canberra believe if Labor won nine seats at the last election this government would be spending a billion dollars on light rail right now? Of course not, because otherwise they would have put it in their election policy. The election policy was just $30 million to progress light rail engineering studies. Instead, because of a deal done with Mr Rattenbury—a flippant deal—the people of Canberra are paying dearly. They are paying dearly through their rates, through their fees, through their charges here and now and going into the future.
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