Deliberately mischievous

In response to Hobart Green’s Alderman, Philip Cocker’s press release On Tasmanian Times: Senator’s Hypocrisy, HERE on the Hobart Tunnel study please see Senator Bushby’s dot points in response.

• I said at the time that I don’t know if a tunnel is the answer. What I do know is that ‘through traffic’ in the city is getting worse, improvements to public transport will only assist at the edges and bikes generally make traffic issues worse.

• Also, the current ‘through traffic’ makes it almost impossible to implement the Gehl plan which Alderman Cocker appears to so stridently support and joining the City and the waterfront is, to me, one of the main attractions of the tunnel concept.

• As such, I support the decision of the majority of the Hobart City Council to examine this option for addressing the problem and consider it would be hard to properly assess its feasibility without full participation by both State and Federal Governments.

• In accusing me of hypocrisy, Alderman Cocker is being deliberately mischievous. He would surely know that by calling for taxpayers funds to be spent wisely, I am not calling for an end to all spending. What I am calling for is better targeted and properly assessed programmes that provide direct benefit to Australians and the conduct of proper cost benefit analyses only increases the likelihood of good projects being funded.

• Alderman Cocker and his fellow Greens would be better placed looking to the billions of taxpayer funds wasted by State and Federal Labor governments, without feasibility and cost benefit analyses, that were supported by Green MPs.