Page 1499 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 6 April 2011
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A lot of the problems with Jamison certainly are transport related. I would particularly like to note—as I believe, having read the comments on his website, that some of the people at Mr Coe’s public meeting may have noted—that there used to be an express bus from Jamison into the city. There is not anymore. I think we should be having that express bus back again. That is why I say that currently the situation is poor. We need to improve it.
We need to be looking at sustainability of this development and at sustainability of Canberra as a whole. As Mr Barr said, in 2002 when the master planning exercise was done in Jamison there was agreement that this site was a suitable site for much higher density residential development than was there at present and that has been there for 10 years. I do not think that is a matter of dispute. But having more residential development only increases the case for better public transport.
Jamison with additional residential is a great place for a fast, express bus into Civic—something like the Redex. It is not the Redex anymore; it is the 200, which has been such a great idea from Gungahlin into Civic and then out to Russell. The Greens have been pushing very much for a Redex style bus service in Belconnen because Belconnen is not well served by public transport. If we had an improvement in public transport, that I would hope would go a long way to alleviating the concerns of some of the people who were at Mr Coe’s meeting.
I agree that we do need to look at the transport and traffic issues of any development, but I do not think that the automatic solution to all of this is more parking. We have to look at what is happening in the bigger picture and, as I have mentioned before, what is happening in the bigger picture is peak oil. We live in a finite world. The oil supplies will peak and then start declining at some point. We can argue about exactly when that is going to be but we cannot really argue about if it is going to happen. I do not want to see Canberra being planned so that the only way that you can reasonably live in it and get around in it is to have a car. I believe we should be planning for much better public transport provision.
The other thing that we need to be planning for is climate change. This Assembly has agreed to a 40 per cent greenhouse gas reduction target and I think that all significant developments such as this should be made bearing that in mind. That is another reason why, instead of looking at more parking, we should be looking at: can we solve the traffic issues of 300 more units worth of residents that will be in Jamison? Can we look at their issues by providing better public transport, by providing better cycling, by providing better walking connections? That is where we should be putting our energy, not just saying that there must be more parking. We need to be a bit more creative. We need to be looking to the future, not to the past.
As I said earlier, public consultation has been a concern of the Greens for as long as the Greens have been around. Some people say that we have been too concerned about consultation and process and that that is all we are interested in. It was part of our agreement, as I said, with the Labor Party and it is an area we are going to keep on pushing.
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