Page 4212 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 21 September 2011
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
So you cannot come in here and say, “We are all for light rail.” The Labor Party say they are for light rail. But they are not prepared to do the study; they are not prepared to do the work. They promise it at every election. The Greens claim they are for light rail. But they have done nothing for the last three years while they have been part of this government and they will be held to account for their lack of action. It is no longer all care and no responsibility; they have the power at the moment to get things done. And they will have to look the electorate in the eye and tell them why they did not get it done.
That is what this motion is about. It is about them saying, “We would like to see something happen.” They could have made it happen. But in the last three years nothing has happened. That is where I think Mr Corbell is correct in his critique of the Greens. The other part of this motion is, “We want it all and we want it now”—when they have not done anything about it until this point.
There is no regard for the costs and the time frames. Let us look now at some specific aspects of the motion and some of the time frames. Firstly, it is lumping a number of different rail issues all into the one motion and I think again that that shows just how slapdash this has been. It is not just about light rail; it is about high speed rail, rail freight and regional rail. Each of those could have a separate motion and a separate discussion. Such is the frantic nature of the Greens’ desire to cover for the fact that for three years they have achieved nothing on this that they have to lump them all in together. They lump them all in together and call on the government to immediately begin consulting with the Canberra public and by the end of 2011 present a high speed rail network proposal to the federal government. They want it all to be rushed out right now.
The reality is that you will not get good outcomes like that. I think it was the rushed nature of the ACT government’s submission to Infrastructure Australia, the fact they did not put in the serious work, that contributed to us not getting funding for this project. Imagine if they had actually done the work. So let us not encourage the government to make the same mistakes they have been making over the last few years. Let us get it right. Let us do the detailed study. Let us do the detailed work. Let us really consult with the community. Let us really get a sense of whether or not people would use it and, if so, how many would use it, therefore how cost effective that might be and therefore where we might be able to put the routes and therefore when we could build it, and then look at how you would deliver it.
If you are not prepared to do that work, this is just again lip-service. I think people get tired of this kind of spin, and the Greens are now as guilty of it as Labor is. The Labor Party promises it at every election and does not deliver it. The Greens, who had three years to do something about it and have done nothing about it, now say, “You need to do it immediately.” They will now trumpet: “We took a motion to the Assembly and it got voted down. We did not get what we wanted because the Labor Party and the Liberal Party do not like light rail.”
What we support is good policy developed in a considered and serious way. We support policy that is costed. Where you do the work you get to the bottom of it. This
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video