Page 565 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 17 February 2016
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Standing Committee on Planning, Environment and Territory and Municipal Services so that the committee could ask questions about the project. We also agreed that if required officials from the Capital Metro Agency and relevant ministers would be available for an additional time at a public hearing during the annual reports process, an extra 3½ hours.
I must say that I am not sure that the Liberal Party has really made appropriate use of those increased opportunities for scrutiny, which makes me wonder perhaps if they are more focused on the headline that can be generated than actually drilling through the information.
In addition to the extra committee scrutiny, the government has released a full business case for public scrutiny. As Mr Corbell touched on in his remarks today, that is something that you will not find other governments doing on projects like this. Naturally that decision, of course, has given additional opportunities to opponents to seek to criticise the project. It even gave academics a nice case study that they can use when they do not agree with a project. That is a price for being transparent but nobody can doubt that the releasing of the business case in full is the mark of an open and honest government that is quite comfortable in putting all the information on the table.
In line with this commitment to transparency we will release the availability payment information. I expect that this will also become a campaigning tool for the opposition. Nevertheless I believe in releasing information and in government transparency. The government can be proud when it completes its light rail project, proving that a large government project can be achieved in a highly open and transparent fashion.
Last week I spoke at length about the foolishness of reneging on the light trail contract or of stalling progress on important sustainable infrastructure because of the base political wishes of the Canberra Liberal Party and I will not go over that again today. I will, however, note that this motion from Mr Coe appears to just be another version on that same theme. The logic appears to be that if we will not announce pre-contract availability payments—which is, of course, not how proper financial negotiations work— then somehow this is not a valid project and we should not sign any contracts.
It is, of course, all part of the ongoing and political attack by the Liberal Party on light rail. It is founded on their dislike of public transport, their dislike of sustainable transport and other sustainability initiatives and their failure to care about the long- term prospects of our city. Never have they been so motivated, except to oppose this project, and it is because it ticks all the wrong boxes for them: public transport, renewable energy, long-term planning for a sustainable city. Why would they be interested in any of these things when their only focus at this point is October 2016?
We have talked before about just how out of step this view has become, not only with Canberrans but also with the federal government, with the business community, with planners and academics and others who are interested in where our city is going over a number of decades. I am sure members have seen the news announced just today—and it has had some discussion in this debate—that Infrastructure has listed Canberra public transport improvements on its priority infrastructure list. This is to help address the congestion and population problems that are growing in our city. That is right. Just
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