Page 113 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 10 February 2016
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Of course, light rail will not alone turn Canberra into a perfect city; it is merely one element of a whole range of social, environmental and economic projects and policies that I would like to see achieved in the ACT. Some of these are well underway—such as our renewable energy targets or great social projects like Common Ground. Others still need a lot of work.
This is one of the reasons I am amused whenever Mr Coe says, “The Greens and the government are so obsessed about light rail; all they think about is light rail.” In fact, the contrary is the case. It is just one of many policies and projects that I and other members of the government are working on. It seems that the only person who is obsessed with light rail is Mr Coe. It is quite clearly the case; he talks of nothing else because he wants light rail to be his election campaign.
Other Australian cities have been enjoying the transformational benefits that light rail can bring and they give us a glimpse of benefits our city may experience in the future. Members may have seen reports this week on the continuing success of the Gold Coast light rail. In 18 months it has notched up 10 million trips. These patronage levels have surpassed expectations, and they are up almost 30 per cent compared to the same six-month period in 2014. The second stage of the Gold Coast light rail is on track to start construction in April. That stage was supported by Malcolm Turnbull, who has invited the ACT to submit a funding proposal for an extension of the light rail to Russell.
The ACT’s capital metro project has progressed steadily in this term of the Assembly. Together the Greens and the Labor Party, as part of this government, have moved methodically through the sensible steps required to build a successful light rail project. It follows from our parliamentary agreement and our pre-election commitments to build light rail in this term of government. The plan was aired thoroughly before the 2012 election, first through Greens announcements and then also with the Labor Party making their policies, which they have reiterated in recent days in great detail. The opposition knows these things to be true. In fact there are numerous documents and news stories that demonstrate this position. History cannot be rewritten, much as Mr Coe and his colleagues might try. As one example, today I was looking at a story on the ABC from September 2012 on “light rail promise” and it clearly highlighted the commitment to build light rail after the 2012 election.
I would like to put on the record my congratulations to the winning consortium on the capital metro project—Canberra Metro. The announcement of the partnership with Canberra Metro is very exciting news for our city. The members of the Canberra Metro consortium bring a wealth of experience and expertise and are committed to working with the government to create a fantastic light rail project. An advantage of public-private partnerships is the potential for experienced private sector partners to bring expertise and innovation to the project, and I am confident that with Canberra Metro we will get just that. I would like also to thank all the bidders, including the unsuccessful short-listed bidder, who I know provided a high quality and competitive bid.
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