Page 2729 - Week 08 - Thursday, 11 August 2016
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Over the past four years, I have been privileged to be able to help lead this government’s agenda to transform the growth and development of our city through the development of our first light rail line from Gungahlin to the city centre. The development of light rail is not just about long-term infrastructure for frequent, reliable public transport, as important as that is. It is also about shaping the way our city grows and develops into the future. Strategic densification in areas such as Northbourne Avenue and Flemington Road will allow more people to live and work close to existing commercial, retail, social and cultural infrastructure. This type of strategic densification is being adopted by cities around the world to reduce urban sprawl; to improve equity, access to housing, physical health and wellbeing; and to create a more sustainable pattern of urban settlement. Many of these objectives are often imprecisely, if ever, measured in economic terms, but it does not mean that they are any less important than the more traditional measures of a project’s economic value.
The opportunities presented by capital metro far outweigh the project’s costs, and the financing method chosen by the government means that the cost of the infrastructure is shared fairly between current and future generations. The work undertaken by the staff of the Capital Metro Agency has been exemplary. This was confirmed in the recent Auditor-General’s report and demonstrated through the procurement process that delivered a project that was $100 million cheaper than projected and with a construction time frame almost a year less than anticipated. The project simply represents a once-in-a-generation step change for our city. In the early 1990s, the opportunity was presented and we turned away. Let us not do it again. Let us not give in to the shorteners and the straighteners who cannot imagine a larger and better Canberra which will need to develop in a more sustainable and equitable way.
Creating a more equitable society is about building a more sustainable city. It will be the low income households, the old, the poor and the sick who will be most disproportionately affected by costly unsustainable housing development, by being locked into a high level of car dependency and by being socially isolated in disconnected neighbourhoods far from the urban centre, and who will be least able to cope with the impacts of a hotter and drier future through being hostage to the vagaries of costly and polluting fossil fuel power generation.
To this end, it has been the greatest privilege of my political life to champion our city’s transition to a 100 per cent renewable energy future. Our society is in the midst of a technological transformation where wind and solar generation are already the cheapest form of new power generation that can be built in our economy. Now is the right time for our city to make this transition. We can seize the economic and environmental benefits that flow from it and we can see our city well prepared for the low carbon future.
The nature of the relationship and engagement with officers of the ACT public service will greatly influence any minister’s ability to implement their policy agenda. While public servants are not, and should not be, any minister’s friend, the best of them can be invaluable counsel, advisers and change agents for the minister’s policy agenda. I am fortunate to have been served by some of the best.
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