The Barr government is irresponsible in its handling of light rail. It keeps warning of the costs associated with cancelling the light rail development contract as it knows that project is unpopular yet it continues to proceed with it. The Barr government is trying to force Canberrans into having light rail, whereas a responsible government would delay all contract commitments until after the October 2016 election as Alistair Coe suggests. As part of the next election ACT voters should be asked, in an unbiased manner, if they wish to proceed with the project.

The opinion polls that the Barr government produces are so blatantly one sided they are not worth responding to. They have established a website so that people can have their say about the Capital Metro project, but you won’t find any of the polls on the site allowing you to reject light rail.

As an example, their latest poll question is “When you travel to over cities do you use public transport?” and it only provides “yes” or “no” answers. “Yes”, of course, includes the occasionally response, and “No” in a respondent’s mind would equate to “never”… so most people will answer “Yes” in this clearly skewed poll. A poll that gave a true answer to this question would ask for a percentage of public transport use and these could be easily tallied up.

Unfortunately the Barr government is acting very irresponsibly, not just about light rail but with many of their policies. I sincerely hope that Canberra votes responsibly in the next ACT election and the Barr government is heavily voted out of office.