Page 2951 - Week 09 - Thursday, 18 September 2014
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government’s own analysis, their own figures that they put forward to Infrastructure Australia, it does not stack up when compared to bus rapid transit. That led Infrastructure Australia to say:
The case for favouring light rail over bus rapid transit has not been strongly made, especially when the submission itself points to the stronger economic performance of a bus rapid transit option.
But they went ahead anyway. This is a government that have said, “Stuff you, Infrastructure Australia, and stuff you, Productivity Commission. We don’t care what you say. You’re just the experts”—because the Productivity Commission came out as well and slammed this proposal—“We’re going to go ahead with this anyway. We’re going to go on this crusade because we don’t really care ultimately about the priorities for public transport for Canberrans. We know that this will only, at peak hour, service less than one per cent of Canberrans on this route, on the tram.” It is not about priorities for people on public transport.
Let us see what the priorities are. The priorities here—as we know and as we have made the point and will make the point time and again; and I know Mr Rattenbury does not like it—are political. They are political priorities to make sure that Mr Rattenbury gets what he wants. What he wants is a nice big project, the biggest project in the ACT’s history, so that when he goes to the election in 2016 he can say to his base, about 10 per cent of the population in one electorate, “Look what I got for you. Don’t worry about the fact that I sold out on everything else when I joined this government, when I became the minister for roads and the minister for parking and led the way on the kangaroo cull. Don’t you worry about all that because here’s a shiny new tram and we’ve put $800 million into it.”
Mr Rattenbury knows that he has to have this project because everybody else in the Greens is saying, “Where is Mr Rattenbury on our issues? Where is Mr Rattenbury on the core issues that we want him to deliver? Why is that he has become the minister for parking, the minister for roads? That is totally against our values as Greens.” Do not be in any doubt about what the priorities for public transport are for this town. It is mostly about keeping Mr Rattenbury in the cabinet.
When I say that one per cent of the population will use it, that is based on the government’s own figures. Kate Carnell was just one in a long list of people who came out saying that this does not stack up for Canberra; it is not viable for Canberra. She joined the Productivity Commission and Infrastructure Australia in saying that. The next day, as is his wont, Mr Corbell came rushing in with his figures to say that, by 2021, 3,500 people in the morning peak will use it. That is actually the same figure that is currently on the buses. So you are going to spend $800 million of taxpayers’ money to build a tram for Mr Rattenbury so that people just simply get off the bus and onto the tram, and we are talking about less than one per cent.
What about the other 99 per cent of Canberrans in peak traffic, the people from Belconnen—your electorate, Mr Assistant Speaker—or Tuggeranong in Minister Burch’s electorate, or from Weston Creek or Woden in my electorate? What are they going to do? What is the equivalent expenditure, because they do not have a Green in
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