Page 1976 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 5 August 2014
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MADAM SPEAKER: Before I call Mr Coe, I will call members to order. On a number of occasions I have called Mr Hanson specifically and members of the opposition generally to order. When things went quiet for a while, there was a general outbreak, with the Chief Minister chiming in as well. It is disrespectful to your own colleagues if I am straining to hear Mr Corbell over everybody else. And while we are at it, Mr Corbell is a seasoned campaigner in this place, but the level of interjection over Mr Gentleman, to someone who was answering his first question, was disrespectful. Mr Coe, a supplementary question.
MR COE: Minister, of the 3,500 people who apparently will use capital metro in the morning peak, how many of these people will be travelling north from the city?
MR CORBELL: I do not have that break-up in front of me at the moment but I am happy to provide it to the member. I will take that question on notice.
MADAM SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Mr Doszpot.
MR DOSZPOT: Minister, how can a resident of Amaroo effectively use capital metro to get to work in Barton?
MR CORBELL: There will be a range of opportunities for people right across the Gungahlin district to be able to utilise the services provided by the capital metro light rail route, both in the short term and in the long term. In the short term, what we know is that increasingly people are making choices about the cost of using their private motor vehicle, and the opportunity, for example, to park and ride as part of their transport journey can be very effectively leveraged through light rail. To give you an example, in South Australia, with the extension of the light rail route from the CBD down towards the Adelaide Entertainment Centre, we now see large numbers of people commuting to the entertainment centre, parking their vehicles there, because until recently it was free and is now at a very cheap rate, and avoiding higher parking charges in the city centre.
We expect similar decisions will be made by Canberrans, particularly with the introduction of paid parking in the parliamentary triangle. People are going to make assessments about the relative merits and costs of driving compared to using low-cost, efficient, rapid, reliable, high-quality public transport services. And that is what this new piece of infrastructure is all about. It is about laying the foundations for a better public transport system for our city, particularly between the major centres, and then integrating it effectively with bus services. In the short term there will be very good integration between the light rail service and the existing bus operations at the city interchange.
In the longer term, of course, with this infrastructure in place, there is the capacity to extend it to other parts of the city, in particular locations like Russell, locations like the parliamentary triangle, in the short to medium term. These are real opportunities for our city, and this government is determined to grasp those opportunities. This government is determined to make the investment in the infrastructure our city needs. (Time expired.)
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