Page 823 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 9 March 2016
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The current rules and regulations are obviously not working. Obviously the government is not trying to attract this sort of investment to Canberra. Obviously the government is not working on regulation in this space. That is why we need my legislation. In the absence of those opposite doing the work, the opposition will happily step up. It is just a shame that so many other jurisdictions across Australia, and indeed across the world, have got a leg up on us in autonomous vehicles.
This government is falling behind rapidly. It is rapidly falling behind every other jurisdiction. I am sure that in the next month or two they are going to, frankly, try and do something in this space to try and show that there is some evidence of doing something. But why is it that other jurisdictions across Australia have already been doing so much more than nothing? That is what we have here: absolutely nothing.
Mr Rattenbury may well talk about the endpoint, whereby autonomous vehicles will be able to drive people from point A to point B. But before we get to that point there has to be testing. That is what this legislation is about. It is about capturing opportunities and markets that exist right now.
Legislation can easily be changed in this place. If we need an amendment to this in six months time, a year’s time or two years time, well, so be it. That should not be an impediment. That should not be a hurdle which cannot be overcome. What we need here and now is a framework which makes the ACT enticing to investment in this space. We simply do not have it, and that is obvious. That is there in the fact that we do not have an autonomous vehicle industry in the ACT.
We have several companies that are doing great work in this space, but all that work is exported. All that work is exported to the mining industry, to South Australia, to the United States or over to Europe. It is a shame that all that expertise needs to be exported and we cannot actually harvest or harness some of that information, some of that intellectual capability here in the ACT for our own industry.
Mr Rattenbury may well try and claim that their solution is more pure. It is all for naught unless we actually get some investment here. There are jurisdictions that have been attracting this sort of investment for years, and we are falling further and further behind. I am very disappointed that Mr Rattenbury does not support this legislation.
In conclusion, I am also quite curious as to why Mr Rattenbury is speaking on this bill rather than the Chief Minister, who yesterday gave a statement on this very subject. Was the Chief Minister’s statement in his portfolio or not? Is the Chief Minister now going to do statements on anything and everything? Obviously there is some sort of tussle between Mr Rattenbury and Mr Barr in this space, but it is unfortunate that the people of Canberra are the ones who lose out of this, because we have got nothing to show for it. We have no autonomous vehicle industry here in the ACT, whereas other jurisdictions have had for years.
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