Page 2562 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 11 August 2015
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integrated terminals for rail and bus connections. We do not have a problem with studying light rail. We do not have a problem with seeing if it is going to be viable, as long as the information you get from those surveys determine the policies you take thereafter.
If the case stacks up, we would take a fully costed proposal to the election in 2012. That is what we said in 2008—”If it stacks up, we’ll take it to the election.” Why does the government not commit to doing that as well? Why does the government not say, “We think it does stack up. However, we will seek the approval of the people of Canberra to this specific $783 million project at the 2016 election.” That is what would be prudent. That is what the people of Canberra should be getting in exchange for the trust they put in governments.
As we said in 2008, we need to give the Canberrans, the Canberra public, a fully informed choice on this very significant undertaking. At this stage it has simply been a choice by Mr Rattenbury and Mr Corbell and not by the 400,000 Canberrans who are going to pay for it.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Deputy Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for Health, Minister for the Environment and Minister for Capital Metro) (12.08): Madam Speaker, in politics you should be defined more by what you stand for and what you want to achieve for your community than by what you stand against and what you want to say should not happen. You should have a vision for the future and you should have hopes and aspirations for the growth and development of your city which are beneficial to the citizens of the city as a whole. And, yes, you should have regard to the evidence when it comes to tackling the challenges of better transport for a better connected city in a place like Canberra.
Let us look at the evidence. Let us look at what Infrastructure Australia is telling us in its latest reviews of the most congested transport corridors in our city. Let us look at which corridor is the most costly per kilometre when it comes to economic drag as a result of poor infrastructure. It is the Federal Highway-Northbourne Avenue corridor. Let us be very clear about that. It is the most congested, the most costly, the most challenging corridor for this government—indeed any government—to respond to.
Where is the response from those opposite? Where is it from the man who says he wants to represent the community of Gungahlin, the fastest growing region in our city and one of the fastest growing in Australia? What is his response? His response is maybe—maybe—to improve traffic light prioritisation for buses on Northbourne Avenue. But that is it. There is no response to the projected delay and projected peak travel time of close to an hour for a 12 kilometre, hour journey from Gungahlin to the city centre, and longer to other parts of Canberra. There is no willingness to say that he wants to turn, for example, one of each of the lanes along Northbourne Avenue, north and south, into dedicated bus-only lanes.
There is no alternative. There is no alternative vision for better public transport. There is no alternative vision for better investment in public transport infrastructure. There is no alternative policy. The position of those opposite is about what they are against, not what they hope for. The position of those opposite is not about how we can make things better but how we can keep them the same. Their position is not about long-
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