Page 4242 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 23 October 2019
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Of the $412 million spent on the Sydney Metro, $356 million represents expenditure with no apparent future benefit to New South Wales.
Political parties and MLAs will always have policy differences on infrastructure. This is good; this is the political process. The community will have differences. Experts will have differences. It is important that we debate the merits of individual projects, the balance of spending between different types of infrastructure, et cetera. That is our role. But it needs to be a considered, sensible and informed debate, not a debate which starts with a motion describing the opposition as sanctimonious.
A considered debate would instead recognise that the vast majority of infrastructure in the plan is reasonably sensible and not hugely controversial. It is very hard to argue against providing schools for new suburbs. The city clearly needs a new southern cemetery. I am sure that all parties in the Assembly agree that we need to fund the rehabilitation of the west Belconnen and Mugga Lane landfills.
Also, a well-informed debate is important. This means publicly considering the costs and benefits of various alternatives. Some of the projects in this plan have been subject to this, I assume, but others have not been. There has not been a lot of public discussion about the alternatives to these things, although I hope that there has been private discussion. Given the very limited government resources, it is important that alternatives are considered and the best option is chosen.
There is also the balance between maintenance of infrastructure and new assets. This is not canvassed in the plan. The word “maintenance” is mentioned once only, in the context of trees, but it is a significant issue for our assets. Look at some of our older schools, our older public housing or our older footpaths.
In the interests of providing certainty for the community and business, I will speak on the Greens’ position on infrastructure in general and the infrastructure plan in particular.
The Canberra community and Canberra businesses can be confident that if the Greens lead the next ACT government, there will be no wholesale overturning of the infrastructure plan. The Greens have important policy differences with the ALP on infrastructure, but they will come as no surprise to the community, or to Canberra businesses, as we have been making the same arguments consistently in many forums for many years.
If this was a Greens infrastructure plan, rather than a negotiated ALP-Greens government plan, it would clearly recognise that we are in a climate emergency, as the Labor and Greens members of the Assembly recognised earlier this year. As Mr Rattenbury said in his budget reply speech, people who care about the territory economy should be focused on climate change, because the impacts of climate change are already having costs for our community and for our infrastructure.
People who care about social outcomes should also be focused on climate change, because the most vulnerable in our community will be most impacted. People who
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