ACT Greens Podcast

Recorded on 5 June 2023, immediately prior to the debate on the Planning Bill, this recording features Jo Clay MLA, Rebecca Vassarotti MLA and ACT Greens members discussing the issues surrounding planning and development in the ACT.

Canberrans are proud to live in the bush capital, and with Greens in government, we have always prioritised environmental protection as a core concern. In this conversation, I shared our work responding to the biodiversity crisis, protecting our local habitats, building biodiversity corridors and ensuring living infrastructure is a core part of our urban environment. We have made great strides but there is still more work to do – both locally and nationally.

Housing and Renting are becoming more expensive, so what can be done to help renters, first homebuyers and homeowners with the cost of living crisis?

On 25 May we held a community forum in Belconnen to discuss these issues with the public. Hit play to listen to Jo Clay, ACT Greens Member for Ginninderra, Shane Rattenbury, ACT Attorney-General and Rebecca Vassarotti, ACT Minister for Homelessness and Housing Services, about what we're working on and where to next in making life better for renters and making housing more affordable.

With Greens in government, we have taken great strides in improving the rights of renters. 

On 11 April 2023 Shane Rattenbury MLA shared the journey leading up to the ACT Greens ending no-cause evictions and introducing new energy efficiency standards for rental properties.

Shane also asked ACT Greens members for their feedback and insights about what rental reform they would like to see next, and how we should further our commitment to providing everyone with a good home.

This month, the findings of the ACT Legislative Assembly’s inquiry into dangerous driving were released.

While there was some important media coverage given to many of the inquiry’s recommendations, especially those around the creation of new dangerous driving offences and enhanced police powers, the potential role of intelligent speed adaptation (ISA) technology didn’t get the attention it deserved.

Read more → https://greens.org.au/act/news/we-know-speed-kills-how-about-controlling-car-instead-driver-feat-andrew-braddock

I’d like to speak about next steps on the Planning Review, now that we have seen the ACT Government response. I am speaking in my capacity as ACT Greens spokesperson for Planning.

The Greens want a vibrant city where people can move around easily. We want to preserve our remaining habitat and make sure we have plenty of trees and green spaces near where we live and work. We want a city where everyone has a home. We want a zero-emissions electric city that can deal with the heatwaves and flooding already locked into our rapidly changing climate.

But in addition to the climate and extinction crises, Canberra is struggling with homelessness, a housing affordability crisis, a booming population and a growing gap between rich and poor. Most cities in the world are facing the same challenges and we must find a way through that looks after our people and our planet.

We Greens back high-quality densification, including the “missing middle” – medium density housing the community have been calling for. This is the only way to tackle the problems we are facing. We need planning and design settings for a compact city that is less reliant on cars. We need careful densification through townhouses and apartments that are close to services. We need green spaces close to home. We need housing options that support people to stay in their community as they age.

Find out more https://greens.org.au/news/opinion-how-should-act-build-missing-middle-ft-jo-clay-mla

On Monday 30th January Network 2023 was launched. Canberra’s bus users are not happy, I have heard this loud and clear. We are trying to encourage more people to use public transport in the short term due to construction disruption in the city, and in the longer term to address climate change and traffic congestion. But this network has gone backwards.

Canberrans want a better bus network. People from all across Canberra in all parts of the community and from all walks of life have spoken to me about the need to improve our bus network. This is why I passed a motion last May in order to improve bus services by delivering minimum hourly services across the weekend and to see a return to a full bus network in 2022. Unfortunately, we have not seen either delivered yet.

We also have not seen the full transition away from Disability Discrimination Act non-compliant buses. I understand the supply issues detailed by the Minister earlier this week. That was a really detailed explanation and I thank the Minister for being so open about the issues. I understand the role COVID has had to play in this. But the ACT Government has had 20 years to become compliant with the new standard.

The Minister’s statement on Tuesday set out that the Government only finalised the procurement of the last 26 leased diesel buses to replace the remainder of the non-compliant buses in March 2022, nine Months before the due date. In an environment where we knew that Covid was creating significant supply chain constraints, we should not have left such an important procurement until 5 minutes to midnight.

Accessibility is essential for many Canberrans who have no other option but to rely on our public transport network. I want many more to use our public transport network as their best and first choice, not as their only option. We must do better. All of these people have been let down by the delays in this procurement. We need to plan our upgrades better and implement them earlier.

We also need to deliver our infrastructure on time. We need a greater level of investment into building new infrastructure, including the long-awaited Woden Bus Depot, so that we can expand the bus network.

Despite contracts being signed in 2018 for the design and construction of the Woden Zero-Emissions Bus Depot, it was only last week that $26.3m was announced to deliver the electrical infrastructure upgrades to facilitate these buses at Woden and Tuggeranong. We have had no announcement at all about electrical upgrades to facilitate zero-emissions buses at Belconnen or any other future northside depot.

The September 2020 Zero-Emission Transition Plan for Transport Canberra put forward that the Woden Bus Depot would be completed by 2022 with another zero-emissions bus depot delivered by 2026. We are not on track. We are delayed. In November in response to my question on notice we found out that the Woden Depot is now not expected to be delivered until late 2024.

I am lodging more questions with the Minister this week. I want to find out when we’ll get a fourth bus depot for Canberra. I am concerned that this new zero-emissions depot may not be completed by the original deadline of 2026 based on what I’ve seen so far.

We need more buses. We have not increased our bus fleet in line with our growing city and growing population, in fact in the last 33 years our bus fleet has shrunk.

In 1990 the ACT had around 282 thousand residents. In 2022 we had more than 456 thousand residents. That’s a population growth of more than 61%. We have also grown geographically. Every single year new suburbs are being built. Lawson, Whitlam, Molonglo, Ginninderry, Jacka, Kenny and more.

In 1990, ACTION had 479 buses and this year we have 456. That is 23 fewer buses in our fleet 33 years later.

This is why we need to choose which services to run during our disruptions. We do not have enough buses. How can we deliver improved services to all these new suburbs and new people, and maintain our existing suburb routes, if we are running fewer buses than we had over 30 years ago?

Light rail is our great public transport success. I love light rail. The people who use it love it. I want to see it expand as soon as possible. But Light Rail is just one part of our public and active transport network.

We must also invest more in our buses. We must transition faster to zero-emissions buses. We need more bus lanes and bus priority measures, more bus shelters and better footpaths connecting them. Without this investment, next year’s bus network will be no better than this year. That will be the same story every year until we plan properly and invest sufficiently. We won’t have a better bus network until we have more buses and improved bus infrastructure.

I want to quote from the 2022 Infrastructure Australia Market Capacity Report. That report is not about ACT infrastructure specifically. It is about Australian infrastructure and it sets out the situation that will apply to all major projects from here on. That report said, and I quote, “the market is arguably at capacity, so project slippage is now expected. It is no longer a question of if a project will slip, but more likely when, by how long and at what cost.”

I would also like to amplify one of their recommendations. They said we must “Improve industry capacity and capability by prioritising procurement and portfolio management and increasing pipeline transparency, certainty and confidence.”

It is going to get harder to deliver major projects and to do it well and on time. So when deciding on transport infrastructure priorities we need to prioritise. We need to choose public transport and active travel first. The Greens understand this. It is essential if we are going to reduce our climate emissions and keep Canberra as a liveable city we can all move around in comfort.

We need to plan well and follow through. We need to invest properly. We need to prioritise clearly. If we don’t, we will continue to have a bus service that does not meet the needs of our people.

This is an opinion piece published in the Canberra Times on 11 January 2023.

Canberrans deserve a well-connected city, where they have a choice to live close to work and amenities, and a city built on principles of sustainability.

High-quality, frequent, reliable, and sustainable public transport is central to that vision. Building light rail is about taking long-term decisions that address the serious challenges this city faces in the future - population growth, congestion, climate action and urban sprawl.

Canberra's population will grow by around 100,000 people in the next decade. How will they move around? Our congestion is growing three times faster than that of other mainland capitals. A total of 63 per cent of our greenhouse gas emissions come from transport, mostly cars. The annual lost productivity cost of road congestion in the ACT is predicted to exceed $500 million by 2031. If we want a different outcome, we can't keep doing what we did before.

Whether they lack the foresight, the imagination, or the fortitude, it is untenable for the Canberra Liberals to have no vision to address the reality of these challenges. Our city needs solutions, not platitudes.

Experts across the disciplines, from town planners to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, are clear on how cities should develop. We can't solve climate change or congestion by building more roads. More roads just fill up with more cars. Instead, we need high-quality denser housing based around great public transport and walking and cycling corridors.

The ACT Greens understand that we must invest in new public transport infrastructure such as light rail to make Canberra more sustainable and liveable as we grow. While any new public transport infrastructure will have a short- to medium-term cost, the longer-term cost of doing nothing is significantly greater.

Those who have used light rail between Gungahlin and the city have already seen the benefits. We know that 43 per cent of people surveyed on light rail said they never used public transport before using light rail. The network will be even more useful once it connects to the fast-growing Parliamentary Triangle, Inner South, and Woden, and later to Belconnen, Russell, the airport, Tuggeranong, and other key places.

Three months ago, the Commonwealth announced a new national security precinct in the Parliamentary Triangle for 5000 staff. If the Canberra Liberals had their way, would these staff drive from their homes out in Kowen or west of the Murrumbidgee River and park in Barton, significantly increasing emissions, congestion, and worsening Canberra's quality of life?

The preferable alternative would be to give people the opportunity to live closer to where they work, to opt for a home on a dedicated public transport corridor.

In this term of government, the ACT Greens have consistently argued in the Legislative Assembly for more and better buses, a faster transition to a zero-emissions bus fleet and faster delivery of light rail stages 2 and beyond. Not only has Stage 1 in Canberra been a great success, there are also many other examples of light rail being rolled out, such as the Gold Coast and Newcastle. While the NSW Liberal government has already committed to the project, NSW Labor has now promised to accelerate the Parramatta light rail as part of their election platform.

Locally, we have seen welcome support from Federal governments of both persuasions, with the former Coalition government committing $132.5 million, and the Albanese government adding $85.9 million of funding. Canberra is a growing and evolving city. The vision of distant suburbs connected by wide, expensive freeways was in vogue in the 1970s, but this century's reality is we need something different. We need focused investment in schools, hospitals, local amenities, and high-quality, frequent, reliable, and sustainable public transport, including light rail. This is something the ACT Greens understand and will keep working to deliver.