Page 1790 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 8 June 2016
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I do agree that we have a challenge here in the ACT in that we are now in our third decade of self-government. People who lived here at a time when the federal government subsidised this city were accustomed to an exceptionally high quality of service: big wide roads, plenty of brand new services and amenities, free health and dental centres attached to every public school, ample government housing and high levels of federal government money funding it all.
But those people who talk about being better before self-government need to reflect on the fact that that is not a reality we now live with. That federal funding is now a thing of the last century. We are now maturing and evolving, and we need to adjust to the level of services that we can deliver as a stand-alone entity and that we are willing to pay for. So I think we need to be realistic.
Those people who still live in the glory days of when the federal government ran this town and the NCDC was in charge of everything need to reflect on the fact that that was heavily subsidised. But I think that within the constraints and the limits of self-government, we need to strike the right balance between delivering high-quality services but charging people an appropriate level of fees and charges in response. That is the balance we need to strike and we need to be realistic about that.
I will touch briefly on light rail, because Mr Smyth has brought that up in his motion. He asserts that building light rail is somehow contributing to declining services in the ACT. Yet as the government has made abundantly clear, we will not be paying the capital costs of light rail until the project is finished at the end of 2018.
The government has made the costs of light rail absolutely clear so we can see where our capital outlay is and where our expenditure on the operations and maintenance costs are for the 20 years from the start of operations in early 2019. This is far more transparent in terms of transport budgets than we have seen for any other public transport project in the ACT ever before, in fact, for any transport project ever before in the ACT.
The Treasurer made a good point at this morning’s budget breakfast when he said, “Who has ever seen the opposition demand a 20-year projection of the maintenance costs for any road in this city?” For all the roads that are being promised at the moment by both sides of politics, where are the 20-year maintenance cost projections on those?
We see that full transparency on the ACT light rail project, but we do not see it on those sorts of projects. It reflects the fact that a public transport project is not as highly valued by the opposition as road projects. The Greens are happy to stand up for projects that do deliver a different paradigm when it comes to transport in this city.
Mr Smyth calls light rail a burden. I think he really does not understand that light rail is far from a burden. It will be a huge transition for this city. It will be a source of economic opportunity. It will be a source of social opportunity, and it will begin to really provide this city with sustainable transport patterns for our future. We know that it is a significant investment. It can make significant savings and significant improvements to the lives of Canberrans. Of course, we will no doubt prosecute the light rail discussion time and time again between now and October.
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