Page 2217 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 June 2018
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The first stage of our light rail system, running on 100 per cent renewable electricity, is scheduled to start later this year. The network will eventually service Canberrans right across the city. It is an ambitious transport project, helping shape the city into a sustainable and highly livable place as we grow through Canberra’s second century. The protests of the ACT Liberals aside, it is already being widely lauded as a smart and forward-looking project for our growing city. Canberra is now making the lists of the world’s most livable cities. And incidentally, almost all of the top 10 cities have light rail systems. Again, this light rail project emerged from the Greens campaigning over many years, with a long-term vision for improved public transport, including light rail, finally secured through our 2012 parliamentary agreement.
The budget funds further planning and design work for stage 2 of light rail, from Civic to Woden, and a range of overdue urban improvements around Woden, which the Greens are keen to see revitalise, with thoughtfully targeted planning and investments. This demonstrates that light rail is not just a transport project; it also facilitates a more sustainable city structure, with more compact development and improved active transport connections, reducing reliance on cars.
A decade ago, the Greens were the only party talking about active transport, now a major focus of this government. A graph showing the history of funding for walking and cycling tells a clear story, spiking noticeably for the years the Greens have had the balance of power. Without the influence of the Greens, without us making election commitments to build a light rail network, without the parliamentary agreement, and without a strong and effective partnership with the Labor Party, you could fairly surmise that the government’s approach to sustainable transport, and a myriad of other issues, would be markedly different today.
Opponents of progressive policies, such as the Canberra Liberals, who fail to articulate the vision of a future for this city for themselves, invariably complain that these policies are economically unviable. Think for a moment about the four years of debate about stage 1 of light rail, during the last Assembly. The Liberals claimed that the sky would fall, that it would be an economic catastrophe, that light rail would send us broke, that it was unaffordable and that the economy would collapse. Here we are with the project almost completed, a budget projected to be in surplus for the next four years, and the ACT maintaining its AAA credit rating.
It has been a long road for the ACT government. When the global financial crisis hit, early in the Seventh Assembly, the Greens committed to supporting the plan taking the ACT into budget deficit to get us through the tough times ahead. This was indeed a challenging time, and, of course, some countries around the world have struggled to recover. But the Greens supported Labor governments, federally and here in the ACT, to invest in infrastructure and in our community to stimulate the economy rather than plummet into recession, with a plan to return to surplus in this Ninth Assembly. Furthermore, we tackled the additional substantial financial challenge of addressing the Mr Fluffy housing contamination in the last Assembly. We are pleased to now be climbing back onto the other side of the red line.
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