Page 2563 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 11 August 2015
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
term thinking for the growth and development of our city; their position is, “Let’s focus on the here,” with no view to the future.
That stands in marked contrast to this government, Madam Speaker. We are committed to the future. We are committed to taking the long-term perspective that you so passionately advocated for in your commentary in that article I quoted earlier in the debate—the long-term view over the short-term, populist position.
There is no doubt that investing hundreds of millions of dollars in a light rail project is contentious. It was contentious on the Gold Coast. It was contentious in Adelaide. It has been contentious, and is contentious, in Sydney. But we know, from the response of cities when this infrastructure is built, that controversy rapidly moves to a strong endorsement of the infrastructure investment. It sees higher levels of public transport patronage than were ever achieved using bus-only modes. And you see people wanting those pieces of infrastructure to be extended promptly in future stages.
Just in the last couple of weeks the Queensland government has announced its analysis of future extensions of Gold Coast light rail. Remember how contentious that project was? It was going to kill tourism. It was going to kill development. It was going to see no growth in public transport usage and it was going to be a waste of money.
Even today the Lord Mayor of the Gold Coast has come out and said, “I was a sceptic. I thought it was a waste of money, but I am convinced. I am convinced because it’s driving investment in my city, it’s creating jobs in my city, it’s seeing more people use public transport, and it’s creating the sort of city we need to be for the 21st century.” And that is from someone who was a sceptic. That is from someone who was not convinced at all about the investment.
Let us talk about the investment proposition here. If you listen to Mr Coe and those opposite, you would think that unless there is some sort of market rate of return that you would get from investing in an investment vehicle with a private finance institution, it does not stack up. The fact is that this project delivers nearly a billion dollars worth of economic benefits across the ACT economy. That economic benefit has been independently peer reviewed and confirmed as a very solid cost-benefit return for a piece of infrastructure like this. It has been independently peer reviewed, and the government has released that independent peer review.
This project delivers jobs. It delivers 3½ thousand jobs during construction, supporting skilled and unskilled labourers. We hear from those opposite that we could have chosen some other project. Well, which one? And where is the pipeline for it? Where is the business case for it? And how is it going to meet the time frames set out by the Abbott government for eligibility under asset recycling? There was not one, there is not one, and those across this chamber know it.
Mr Coe has said, “You could have spent it on buses.” It is actually explicitly excluded under the asset recycling. Road augmentation of that nature is explicitly excluded. So they do not know what they are talking about. It is the same when they say, “It’s a billion dollars that could be spent on something else,” as though there is a billion dollars sitting in the bottom drawer available to be spent in the next 12 to 18 months.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video