Page 2748 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 16 August 2017
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sustainable transport system pretty much from the beginning. For many years, of course, nobody really listened. I think it is great that we are now making headway towards a more-sustainable future for the ACT. I think this motion from Mr Steel encapsulates how far we have come in the past 13 years.
Back in 2004, the then-ALP government—this is before the Greens-ALP governments started in 2008—released its sustainable transport plan. The plan was based on the best available—“best available” as they saw it—transport economic research and modelling. The plan found that the best transport system for the ACT from an economic perspective and a transport engineering perspective would be a much more sustainable system. It would have much less car use and far better sustainable transport options. The plan included detailed targets and a suite of actions to create a more sustainable system.
What happened? Basically, it was ignored. The plan was gutted in the 2006 slash and burn. ACTION got a huge budget cut and services were slashed. The government then kept on with business-as-usual capital works. Every year roads infrastructure spending was much higher than public transport infrastructure spending. The inevitable result of cutting back on sustainable transport was that not many extra people used it.
But now, with the ACT into its third Greens-ALP government, there has been a complete shift in the debate. This is really great. There has been a huge shift in priorities towards a more-sustainable Canberra and a more-sustainable transport system. To highlight this, I compare the parliamentary agreement for the Seventh Assembly with the current one. On active travel, the best the Greens could get in the Seventh Assembly was: increase recurrent funding for cycling infrastructure to $3.6 million per annum, provide $2.5 million to address the maintenance backlog, implement signage on the cycling network and provide an extra $500,000—half a million per annum—above the then current levels for footpath upgrades and maintenance.
But for the Ninth Assembly, this Assembly, the parliamentary agreement has $30 million for additional priority footpath maintenance, cycling and walking route upgrades and age-friendly suburb improvements. This is a huge shift. We have gone from $12 million to $30 million from the Seventh Assembly to the Eighth Assembly to the Ninth Assembly. This is really great. This is the list of sustainable transport investment that underpins Mr Steel’s motion.
It is also really positive that as well as the ALP having moved a long way over the past 13 years in terms of sustainable transport, active transport and a sustainable Canberra more generally, the Liberal Party is starting to head in this direction. This is very positive. From what I can see, the last Assembly spent its time just attacking and counter-attacking over light rail. It was great not to be here to listen to it. Week after week the Canberra Times was reporting on some Liberal light rail attack on the government, or the government’s attack on the Liberals. Frankly, I would have to say that the vast majority of the Canberra community was utterly sick of this by the election.
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