Page 1815 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 5 May 2010
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expenditure on active transport and sustainable transport is positive, it is being squeezed in what is in fact still a very car and road focused government. I believe Mr Stanhope said earlier today in question time that there is currently $186 million in road contracts currently being worked on, which rather dwarfs the $97 million over a number of years which was announced in the budget yesterday for more sustainable transport options.
Canberra still has the lowest level of public transport usage of any Australian capital city and the budget, unfortunately, reveals that the number of public transport patrons dropped last year. The budget does not fund more services, which are a key to more usage.
Road transport in the ACT also creates almost one million tonnes of CO2 equivalent annually. Per capita, this is the highest amount of emissions from passenger vehicle use for any capital city in Australia—and it is largely government policies which have created this.
As I have said a number of times, the ACT government’s transport policy still strongly favours roads and cars over active and sustainable transport modes. This has been verified by a University of Melbourne study from December 2007. It analysed transport patterns and policies in Australia for the last 30 years and noted that we have not taken advantage of opportunities that we had for better transport because transport policies have remained car dominated. It said that “the car remains king in Canberra” and that “transport policy remains dominated by road building, with public transport treated mainly as a social service”.
Mr Stanhope’s response to our questions in the past in the Assembly on transport indicates a strong belief on his part that roads and cars need to stay the focus of our transport system. He cites the economy and Canberra’s geographic and density issues as among other excuses for not making significant changes. But these are just excuses. Other cities around the world have shown how to overcome them. Copenhagen, for example, has the third largest urban sprawl of any European city. Copenhagen was also a city completely car dominated in the post-World War II period, yet it transformed into a modern leader in sustainable and active transport. It did this because its leaders made brave political choices. That is what we need for Canberra and we need it now.
The lack of action by the government in the past prompted the ACT Greens to release a policy discussion paper about active transport in March this year and I tabled it earlier today. Mr Seselja’s reaction at the time was “They want to force people out of their cars. This is an anti-car, anti-family plan.”
The question is, really, who is being anti-family? The Liberals appear, on the basis of Mr Seselja’s reaction, to have no interest in improving Canberra’s transport options. It appears that they want to lock people in Canberra’s fringes into car travel, forcing families to own two cars. While this may sound nice at present, what do the Liberals offer to Canberra’s families when petrol prices rise and when peak oil changes the way our community and society work? What do the Liberals plan to do to stop the increasing costs of petrol and car use hurting Canberra’s families? Does Mr Seselja
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