Page 3625 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 27 October 2015
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Transport—light rail
MS PORTER: My question is to the Minister for Capital Metro. Minister, can you outline to the Assembly how the government is engaging with the community on the capital metro light rail project?
MR CORBELL: I thank Ms Porter for her question. The Capital Metro Agency is very closely engaged in a broad range of community engagement exercises, which is appropriate for a project of this size and scale. For example, the Capital Metro Agency is out and about in the community. It attends community events such as the Celebrate Gungahlin festival and a range of party at the shops activities across the city. This helps capital metro to talk with and answer questions from the community about the project.
Also, through our engagement on issues such as the draft environmental impact statement, we provide opportunities for the community to have their say on the project. The draft environmental impact statement saw a broad range of comments come forward on a range of issues of concern to the community, but it also allowed the agency to communicate the scale of the project and the range of issues that need to be addressed, including issues such as potential impacts on biodiversity, landscaping issues, greenhouse gas emissions, traffic management issues and the design of various elements of public transport infrastructure. That has been a very important process.
We also have a broad range of drop-in sessions associated with the EIS process and the use of social media. The government is also establishing community reference groups that will allow for business and community representatives to be engaged in ongoing consultation as we move towards the construction phase of the first stage of light rail for our city.
We also have the very effective public place manager program now in place, with dedicated public place managers in the Gungahlin Town Centre, at Dickson and in the city. Our public place managers are doing a fantastic job by talking to local business and local residents about what is happening with light rail in our city. I had the opportunity to join with the public place manager in Gungahlin in the past couple of weeks, along with my colleague Ms Fitzharris. We had a great time meeting with local businesses in Gungahlin who are overwhelmingly very positive about what light rail will mean for their business and for their town centre. That is a very encouraging level of feedback. They also appreciate the engagement by our public place manager program because they are out on the ground reaching out to local businesses, knocking on their doors, and making sure that they have any questions properly answered with all the information that can be made available to them.
The Capital Metro Agency will continue with a very comprehensive program of community engagement to make sure that people understand what is happening with the project and are able to have their questions answered.
MADAM SPEAKER: Supplementary question, Ms Porter.
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