Page 1232 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 6 April 2016
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But why are we doing it? We are doing it because it is about transforming the way our city grows and develops. It is about ensuring that we lay the first stage of world-class, high-quality, reliable, frequent public transit that will meet the needs for this city not just for the next five years, the next 10 years or the next 15 years, but for the next 25, 30, 40, 50 years. That is the sort of lifespan of this sort of infrastructure, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is long-term investment for the future growth and development of our city.
As we approach a population of over half a million, we have to be making long-term investment decisions that meet the needs of this growing population. We have talked a lot about why the Northbourne Avenue corridor. The only point to be made on that again is that the bulk of growth in the population for our city is on the north side of Canberra, and it is projected to be that way for the next 15 to 20 years. That is where the demographic change is happening. That is where the population growth is happening. That is where we need to accommodate that growth.
We know, too, that the Northbourne Avenue corridor is the most congested and the most costly in term of lost productivity of any road transport corridor in the city. So it makes perfect sense to make an investment in that corridor that is a long-term one for the future growth and development of our city. We have been very clear that light rail is not just about better, world-class public transport; it is also about making sure that we have a more sustainable pattern of urban development that accommodates this growth.
We simply cannot keep building more and more suburbs alone. We cannot keep doing that as the only policy response to delivering housing for a growing population. We need to encourage higher density. We need urban renewal. The Chief Minister has put urban renewal front and centre of his policy agenda because he recognises and this government recognises that that is where we need to turn as a key policy response to deal with that growth in population.
Light rail sits at the centre of that because if people live close to high-quality public transport where they can walk and cycle and move about easily, where they do not need a timetable and where they can get closer to where they work, where they recreate, where they use cultural facilities, where they are able to shop without using the car, then you deliver great urban outcomes for people and you improve their quality of life. That is what this government is committed to. These are the reasons why this project is so important.
We hear the scare campaign from those opposite in the same way that we heard the scare campaign about the jail, the same way we heard the scare campaign about the arboretum. Remember, Madam Deputy Speaker, how they were all over the arboretum? They said that it was a waste of money; it should never happen; it should be cancelled. Now it is one of the leading venues in this city, acclaimed nationally and internationally as a destination in its own right and greatly enhancing the standing and status of our beautiful city. But they, as is always the case, have no vision. They have no capacity to think beyond the next couple of years and to make the decisions that grow the standing, capacity and liveability of this most beautiful of cities.
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