Page 2635 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 15 August 2017
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59 recommendations, agreed in principle to 36, agreed in part to 10, noted 43, and not agreed to 10. A response has been provided in relation to each individual recommendation.
In closing, there is nothing in the estimates committee report or its recommendations that raises any issues that would prevent passage of the Appropriation Bill 2017-2018 or the Appropriation (Office of the Legislative Assembly) Bill 2017-2018. On behalf of the government, I again thank the committee for their consideration of the bills and for their report. I commend the government response to the Assembly.
Debate (on motion by Mr Wall) adjourned to a later hour.
Ministerial delegation to North America
Ministerial statement
MS FITZHARRIS (Yerrabi—Minister for Health and Wellbeing, Minister for Transport and City Services and Minister for Higher Education, Training and Research) (10.08): I would like to report to the Assembly on the delegation that I led to North America between 14 and 27 May 2017, where I attended the International Association of Public Transport—UITP—2017 global public transport summit in Montreal and a subsequent International Association of Public Transport Australia and New Zealand study tour in the US and Canada. This mission was timely and significant for the ACT government in terms of the current work underway to transform our public transport network and implement new technologies. Indeed, the ACT is uniquely positioned within Australia to move quickly to realise the advantages from new technologies around the world.
While in previous times transport investments were primarily focused on road infrastructure developments, there has been a marked shift to investments in public transport nationally and globally. Canberra is a growing city with a population expected to reach 600,000 people by 2050. The government is taking action now to plan for the future so that Canberrans can look forward to a city that has sustainable, innovative transport networks, services and facilities, so that they can be mobile and move around our city affordably, sustainably and with ease. Most importantly, it will give Canberrans a real choice to leave the car at home.
The transportation field is rapidly changing in areas of technology, business models and customer expectations. Throughout North America we saw technology changing the face of many areas of the public transport industry, like on-demand transport, ticketing, autonomous vehicles, electric vehicles, cybersecurity and service providers. The ACT government has made significant decisions regarding the future of public transport operations in the ACT, including the purchase of new buses, a new ticketing system and investment in stages 1 and 2 of light rail. Those decisions are now in various stages of delivery and planning.
Just yesterday I announced electric buses entering the Transport Canberra fleet, while a state-of-the-art ticketing system using account-based technology accessible through devices and more traditional cards is also not far away. The integration of urban
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