Page 1366 - Week 04 - Thursday, 4 April 2019
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The Monaro Highway is a highway, but it currently has multiple at-grade signalised intersections right along it and also some roundabouts. Many of these intersections are bottlenecks which see congestion at peak times. This will only get worse as the population of our region grows. This also results in speed having to be inconsistently reduced to 80 kilometres an hour, particularly around Hume and the Alexander Maconochie Centre, for safety reasons. If we do not address this future congestion on the Monaro, it will hold back south-siders from getting to work and getting home to see their families of an evening, and decrease the efficiency of our freight route linking with the Majura Parkway.
I know that Ms Le Couteur expressed a different view on this project yesterday, but it is entirely legitimate for the aim of these upgrades to be to safely provide a consistent speed of 100 kilometres an hour from Johnson Drive to Hindmarsh Drive on what is a major highway for our region. And we will improve traffic flow for south-siders by looking at removing traffic lights, roundabouts and other intersections and looking at whether these could be replaced with grade-separated interchanges to keep Canberrans moving.
MS CODY: Minister, would the Monaro Highway ever intersect or link with a future Monash Drive?
MR STEEL: I thank Ms Cody for her supplementary. It will be impossible for the Monaro Highway ever to link with Monash Drive under our government because we will never build Monash Drive. Monash Drive, as set out in the National Capital Plan, is a four-kilometre road from Antill Street down to Fairbairn Avenue.
It is planned to plough through predominantly tree-covered reserves bordering Hackett, Ainslie and Campbell, which would result in the loss of or disturbance to areas of existing yellow box and red gum grassy woodland ecological communities located within the Mount Ainslie and Mount Majura nature reserves, reserves that are home to 40 threatened species, including the glossy black cockatoo, the superb parrot and the little eagle.
There are also 141 known listings for Aboriginal sites and potential archaeological deposits that have the potential to be impacted by the construction of Monash Drive. I have visited some of those myself in just the past few years. This fictitious road would be environmentally damaging, is unnecessary and is expensive, and it should never be built by any future government.
I have written to the National Capital Authority asking them to remove this road from the plans for our city, which they have rejected. I now call on the federal Liberal government to reverse their decision, which would also result in increased traffic using local streets in Hackett and Watson, as well as some streets in Reid, such as Coranderrk Street and Anzac Parade.
Child and youth protection services—placement policy
MRS KIKKERT: My question is to the Minister for Children, Youth and Families. Minister, a comparison of the CREATE Foundation’s 2013 and 2018 surveys shows
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