Page 2143 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 8 May 2012
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Kerrigan Street in Dunlop, where it comes into Fraser, is a speedway and a considerable concern for resident of the suburb. On Drake Brockman Drive in Holt we see the dual conditions of one road being hazardous when there is little traffic because of high speed limits and then the numbing amount of traffic backlog when you get to peak times.
On the subject of peak times, I think that it is timely to go back to the issue of William Hovell Drive that we have discussed on a number of occasions as an example of how this impacts on my constituents in west Belconnen. The figures provided by the government most recently show that the variations between journeys on William Hovell Drive between Drake Brockman Drive, which I have just mentioned, and Parkes Way varies from seven minutes and 10 seconds to 20 minutes and 30 seconds.
If you were to work on the basis that 7 minutes and 10 seconds is the minimum time it takes to travel that journey—I suspect it would be less if there were no traffic—to the longest time during the survey, that is 13 minutes every morning for a constituent in Belconnen. That is 65 minutes a week. That is slightly over an hour that my constituents and your constituents, Madam Deputy Speaker, could be spending doing something more profitable, something better for them and their lives than sitting in congestion on William Hovell Drive, which has now been made worse by the change, the arbitrary change and without notice change, in the speed limit from 90 to 80 kilometres an hour. William Hovell Drive has become emblematic for the people of west Belconnen in relation to the government’s poor management. (Time expired).
MR HARGREAVES (Brindabella) (3.52): I will put a couple of facts on the table. Mr Seselja, the Leader of the Opposition, has brought forward this MPI about the state of the roads of the ACT. We are assuming that he is saying that they are pretty pathetic, that they need work and all that sort of stuff. I would argue that “state of roads in the ACT” is quite a good title actually, because I think there are a lot of congratulations coming to the ACT government for what they have done over the years that I have been in this place.
I need to put it on the record that when the ACT inherited self-government in 1989 we inherited a very ageing road infrastructure. It needs to be put on the record that not one cent—nothing—came from the federal government to assist in bringing that ageing road infrastructure up to scratch so that we would be responsible for it at a premium quality after that point. We had to find the money to deal with that. I am pleased to say that this government has done excellent work over the years to do that.
Mr Seselja, in his speech, spoke for 15 minutes, 30 per cent of which was on one road, the GDE. He complained a lot about the GDE. What he did not say was that the Liberals put $32 million in the budget for that. They did not put in nine-tenths of the provision that you see there today. They did not put in provision for a lot of the bridgework over Belconnen Way, for example. That was not there. A close examination of exactly what the Liberals did offer by way of a Gungahlin to Tuggeranong solution will reveal that it was grossly inadequate.
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