Page 3422 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 17 August 2011
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
So the government needs to be clear about what its objectives are. At the moment, its draft parking strategy appears to be all about squeezing Canberrans out of their cars. It will not work. All it will do is inconvenience families in the outer suburbs.
So we say: “Let us stand up for those families in the outer suburbs. Let us stand up for the mums and dads in Tuggeranong, the mums and dads in Gungahlin and Belconnen and Weston Creek, those families who have very few options when it comes to public transport. Let us stand up for them. Let us be sure there is adequate car parking. Let us recognise the fact that they will continue to rely on their cars.” Regardless of the scaremongering from the Greens about peak oil, people will use cars. Whether they are running on oil, whether they are running on electricity, people are going to continue to use cars. We need to recognise that fact. We need to support families in their choices and we need to not deliberately inconvenience them. We need to—(Time expired.)
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (5.27): The government will not be supporting Ms Le Couteur’s amendment. The reason for that, as is often the case with amendments from Ms Le Couteur and her colleagues, is that the amendment seeks to basically determine government policy on the floor of the Assembly and to do a range of things which basically require the government to ignore all the work it has done on policy development over the last couple of months and take a different tack. So for that reason, the government will not be supporting Ms Le Couteur’s amendment. However, there are elements of Ms Le Couteur’s amendment that the government is comfortable with.
I think it is also worth taking issue with this false dichotomy that the Liberal Party bring to this debate, and that is, of course, the argument that cars are good, cars are about freedom and anyone who is opposed to even a moderating of our reliance on the private motor vehicle is opposed to freedom and is opposed to the family and is fundamentally an evil person. I will tell you what is the problem. The problem is locking low income families into circumstances where not only do they have to own one car but they have to own two or three or more cars to ensure their mobility needs are met. That is what is really unjust: locking low income families into circumstances where not only do they have to own one car but where they have to own two or three or more and pay the rego, pay the parking costs and pay the fuel costs that will come from that.
I will tell you what is inequitable. What is inequitable is to lock low income families and low income households into a circumstance where because they are, more often than not, located on the urban edge, they have to travel further, they have to pay higher fuel costs. They are the families who are most vulnerable to the impacts of adverse price movements in fuel. That is what is inequitable and that is why governments must invest in improvements to alternatives that allow those families to break out of that inequity.
Mr Seselja: It is all about stick for you.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video