Yesterday’s announcement by Planning Minister Simon Corbell reinforces that proposition. Traffic problems are relatively easy to resolve. People need to move from one place to another. Build a road. Build a railway. Put on some more buses. For several years now, many people from Gungahlin have had to drive through a bottleneck every morning to get to places of work. They have been angered by the fact that people from other town centres – Woden, Weston, Belconnen and Tuggeranong – have had the wonders of dual carriageway expressways to the centre and to each other. Belconnen Way, the Tuggeranong Parkway, Hindmarsh Drive and Parkes Way over the past three decades have provided Canberrans’ birthright to the residents of place – unimpeded free-flow car access to wherever they want to go in under 20 minutes. Except to Gungahlin.
Gungahlin, moreover, is a creature of self-government. It was mostly developed post 1989 on a model of giving large tracts of land to developers. Those naïve governments failed to address infrastructure issues in the same way as the relatively cash-rich federal bureaucracy spear-headed by the former National Capital Development Commission. Transport, shopping centres, verges, landscaping, schools, public spaces were given a back seat to the need to flog off land for houses.
The residents of Gungahlin saw themselves as second-class citizens. Corbell realised soon after his fluke election in 1998 that hell hath no fury like a Canberran denied the birthright of driving a car to work.
But Corbell was elected to the seat of Molonglo. Unlike his Molonglo colleague deputy leader Ted Quinlan who could rely on his deputy’s status and a reputation for being able to do the sums, Corbell knew he would have to offer something to his electors if he was to be reelected.
He had a devil of a job. Molonglo includes the inner north as well as Gungahlin. Inner north residents (of O’Connor, Turner and Lyneham) did not want Gungahlin Drive cutting through their bushland. Residents of Gungahlin wanted a Drive – anywhere.
Corbell promised the people of Gungahlin they would get their Drive. He promised the people of the inner north they would keep their bushland.
He was like the British colonial office’s Palestine section in World War I – promising the same land to two different people.
His solution was to find a completely different homeland for Gungahlin Drive. It was to be west of the Australian Institute of Sport.
He ran into unexpected strife. He obviously had not thought his solution through. The western route might well have placated his inner-north and Gungahlin electors, but two new protagonists entered the fray – the Australian Sports Commission – which runs the Australian Institute of Sport and the residents of Aranda.
Corbell has played this issue so badly that for the first time in a generation two conservative federal ministers are going into bat vigorously in favour of a national institution’s location in Canberra. Both Territories Minister Wilson Tuckey and Sports Minister Rod Kemp have asserted the need for a freeway-free Institute of Sport and have sided with the AIS’s desire to stay in Canberra. This is an extraordinary development from ministers of a government hell-bent on bashing Canberra and denuding of any institution (from the prime ministerial residency down) it can move to the “real world’’ of the state capitals.
And what did Corbell address in yesterday’s announcement? Just the concerns of Aranda (and Kaleen) residents. Gungahlin Drive would be realigned slightly so the burghers of Aranda would not see or hear the traffic.
He said that “”with over 400 people participating in the consultation sessions with residents and stakeholders . . . we have made a number of enhancements to the Gungahlin Drive Extension that accommodate several community concerns including the impact on AIS operations’’.
It is twaddle. The Schoolboy Socialist misses the point when he talks of “”community concerns’’. The AIS is hardly a community concern. It is a national one. Corbell can have any number of community consultations about Gungahlin Drive and juggle the interests of the inner north, Aranda, Kaleen and the commuters of Gungahlin until he gets a compromise agreement. But Canberra is more than Gungahlin, the inner north, Aranda and Kaleen. Canberra is the national capital. Its main function in the Australian polity is to house the nation’s major national institutions – the Parliament, the major departments, the national museum, gallery, war memorial, elite sports institute and so on.
Informed people at the AIS suggest that Corbell has not properly discussed, let alone addressed the concerns of the AIS. And his changes to Gungahlin Drive announced yesterday in response to the report by Dr Ken Fitch, do not address those concerns, according to the AIS.
To the extent there is a new alignment it is realigned to meet the concerns of residents in Aranda. There is no realignment near the institute of sport. The new alignment might have some fancy cutting and “”noise walls’’ but the fact remains it will go a few metres from AIS residences and a short distance from training areas.
The road will go in a 5-7 metre cutting with a 2m mound. But the fumes and the noise will still have to go somewhere – to the AIS because that is the direction of the prevailing wind.
As the chief executive of the Australian Sports Commission, Mark Peters said, ‘On the evidence in the Fitch report the Commission will be continuing to advise that there is serious potential for adverse impacts on athletes and the sports system, particularly its capacity to gain optimum advantage from the AIS campus in Canberra.’’
It might sound a bit precious. Athletes have to train in Tokyo, Seoul, Bangkok and dozens of other cities will problems far greater than a Gungahlin Drive. But the reason the AIS like Canberra is that it is the best. And elite athletes want the best environment. If Gungahlin Drive goes ahead they will seek the best elsewhere.
Even if their concerns are exaggerated, it remains a big risk for Canberra. If we detract even slightly from what athletes think is the best we will risk losing all or part of the AIS to other places in Australia which will then become in the athletes’ eyes preferable to Canberra.
That is a big price to pay for Simon Corbell’s seat.
The thing will have to be tunnelled (cut-and-bury style like the Molonglo Parkway near ANU) or abandoned for a more sensible route way out to the east to link with Majura Road and dropping in to the Parliamentary Triangle on the Russell point.
But perhaps we are all under-estimating Corbell’s political skills. Perhaps he has deliberately conceded everything to affected residents (voters) and given nothing to the AIS in the knowledge that Tuckey and Kemp will use their federal powers to put a stop to the any western alignment. And make no mistake the Federal Government and Parliament have the power to stop Gungahlin Drive stone dead. Corbell can then go back to the voters in 2004 and say, “”I did my best but those evil federal ministers prevented me from giving you what you want.’’