Page 2296 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 12 August 2014
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Your own reports say that other routes would be far more effective. Perhaps if we went from Kippax to the airport and through several large employment centres, past two, three, perhaps four universities, past the CBD, past the defence headquarters and connected several places of interest for tourists, you might actually have a chance of making a case. But your inner consultation amongst yourselves to the exclusion of the community is what will undo you.
If the project is right, the data is right, your case has been made and your conclusion is the correct one, then you would not be out polling the people of the ACT to find out if they agree with you. You would already have the people of the ACT on side. That, for instance, is the process that you, Madam Speaker, outlined: work up the case, go to the people and get their validation. Do not make up a number, make an internal decision, not include the people before you get there, and then end up with 53 per cent.
I am surprised that it is 53 per cent. It will depend on the questions. “Are you in favour of light rail?” Yes, who is not in favour of light rail. “Are you in favour of light rail down Northbourne Avenue at a cost of $600 million to $700 million with an unknown ongoing cost and impact on the people of the ACT?” Maybe not so. This is the problem with what has been put out by this government, by this emotionally involved minister, who really has not thought this through from the start.
It is important that we get this right because there are social consequences of what will happen. It is interesting that the people of the ACT have the highest participation in organised sport, in cultural events, in volunteering, in fitness and in a number of other criteria that you might judge social wellbeing by. How do they do that? They actually do it in their cars. You cannot deliver meals on wheels on capital metro. Those people that go to work and do some volunteering on the way home or who might go to work, drop their kids at school, duck out at lunch time to one of their kids’ activities, leave work early to take their kids to sport, to music, to the library or to swim training cannot do that on capital metro.
The bulk of them cannot do it because they do not live on the capital metro route, and that is the problem. We have not maximised the potential from this because it is a political decision made to keep Mr Rattenbury sweet. That is all this is about. This is not about serving the needs of the people of the ACT, because we would have actually done the master plan first and then picked the route from the master plan that actually worked. What we have done is pick the route and now we are developing a master plan as to where it will go after that.
Would it not have been more effective to do something that perhaps covered the parliamentary triangle so that you could include the tourism value during the day, that you might link a growth centre like Kingston Foreshore with its increasing population and areas around Manuka and Griffith where the infill is occurring? But, no, we have picked the route that only saves a minute in time—if it works on time—for almost exactly the same number of people on that route that currently use the buses.
I am not sure where the expectation is about where the people are coming from, but if they are getting off the bus to get on the train, we have not solved anything. What we
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