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Ms LEE RHIANNON: I direct my question to the Minister for Roads. The Minister can get on his bike with this one. Considering that the Roads and Traffic Authority [RTA] has drastically cut its expenditure on its fully funded bicycle network facilities projects for the coming financial year, while the overall RTA budget has increased 12 per cent, how can the Minister justify cutting this proportionately insignificant expenditure on bicycles? Does this and the abolition of the senior executive service position of General Manager, Bicycles and Pedestrians, unmask him as a Minister committed to entrenching New South Wales as a car-worshipping State at the expense of cyclists and pedestrians?
The Hon. MICHAEL COSTA: The honourable member probably does not realise that we have well over 3,000 kilometres of cycleways ways in New South Wales, which probably is enough to ride from here to Perth. When we are looking at expenditure on our core businesses, which happens to be roads, I certainly make no apology for looking at savings that focus on core business. The core business of the RTA is the provision of roads through a range of funding mechanisms.
Ms Lee Rhiannon: But cyclists use roads. Can't you acknowledge that?
The Hon. MICHAEL COSTA: Have you finished?
Ms Lee Rhiannon: Do you want to drive them off roads?
The Hon. MICHAEL COSTA: It would make it a lot easier if she got some of those Greens in public housing to come out of public housing and allow us to have more resources to focus on these things. But while members of the Greens party still live in public housing and receive large salaries she is not in a position to make comments about budgetary measures. In terms of motor vehicles, the honourable member has to get it into her head that more than 90 per cent of journeys on any particular day are by road and, therefore, we have a need to provide road infrastructure.
The PRESIDENT: Order! I call the Hon. Michael Costa to order.