In May this year, as a result of recent government legislation, a 16 year old girl cycling to school was fined $292 for passing a tram with opened doors on Swanston street, the same penalty which applies to a super-charged V8 or a Range-Rover, or to a billionaire.  This is policy (and political) ineptitude of a very high order.

Far and away the most cost effective component of any programme to tackle the transport woes of our city is the encouragement of cycling growth, already running at near record levels.

During the 1890's Melbourne was one of the world's great bike cities, possibly the greatest of all.  Forget Amsterdam or Copenhagen, forget Portland, Oregon, Melburnians took to the new invention with a joyous enthusiasm matched by few other sub-branches of the human family.  Our city will have that reputation again. 

There is a lot of work to be done.  We must do anything it takes to meet the needs of the least confident riders and potential riders.  Anybody who has ever had half a mind to try riding to work, or school, or to the shops must be made to feel safe, and confident of government's utmost support.  Our cycling facilities must meet the ‘Mums and Kids Test', whereby they provide a level of reassurance sufficient for mothers to send their children out on their bikes.


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A Cyclist Vents His Spleen At Adam Bandt

It gives me no joy whatsoever to say it, but Adam Bandt has shown a total failure of imagination on bikes.

I suppose politicians have always taken their key constituents for granted. That doesn't mean I have to like it. When the big policy settings are so wrong, when the instinctive tactics on cycling issues are so deficient, and when there is a complete absence of any decent energy or chutzpah on the whole subject then merely showing his face at the occasional bike festival or Ride to School Day just doesn't cut it. Bikes need paths, not platitudes.

First there was the exemption of petrol from the carbon tax. It may well be true that the ALP considered this was a political inevitability (I don't agree) but that is beside the point. This was the moment when Adam Bandt should have been at his most noisily insistent on our behalf, securing some very significant quid pro quo in the form of funds for urgently needed cycling infrastructure in our cities. 'If motorists are to get a free pass on carbon pricing, then you've got to find something else pretty darn special for bikes. My electors would expect nothing less.' should have been his clear message to the prime minister.

Alas, not a murmur did we hear from the member for Melbourne. Not a single pusillanimous peep for pushbikes.

The case for bike infrastructure in exchange for the petrol exemption would have been, in my view, so compelling as to have been unanswerable, had it been put. Smarter heads in the cabinet may even have recognised that it would have made an excellent way of selling the carbon tax to the broader electorate, the corroborative detail that might have lent artistic verisimilitude to their otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. And a good way to pre-empt the Liberal party's idea of an 'activist' approach to cutting emissions to boot.

That the case was not put must be a matter of the greatest regret, and worst of all, the only possible explanation that I can see is that it simply wasn't thought of.

As a cycling advocate I have a good deal of sympathy with the Liberal party's activist approach to cutting carbon emissions. I share the average Australian's mistrust of Overarching Financial Instruments as a panacea for anything. The carbon tax was essential, but will never do the job by itself. In fact, in this crazy, Kafka-esque world where petrol can be exempted from a carbon tax an activist approach is all cycling advocacy has left.

At the time I sought, and got, a meeting with someone, anyone, in Mr Bandt's office. There I was heard graciously and at length as I put the view that this was a priceless opportunity lost, and additionally that many in his electorate might not share his faith that electric cars were as important a priority as fixing the dreadful conditions for cyclists on our roads, conditions which clearly discourage too many before they even start.

I don't seem to have left much impression. Last month the hoary old issue of government assistance to the automotive industry, that perennial blister of Australian political administration, resurfaced briefly. The ALP stuck to its traditional position of maintaining undiminished the scarcely believable largesse that Australian governments have always handed over to the multinational car manufacturers. It is very difficult to ascertain precisely how much money is currently being gifted in this manner. In Commonwealth funds alone I have seen the figures variously of $1.5 billion, $2.5 billion or $3.4 billion. I strongly suspect that nobody in government really knows any more, or cares. Australian government handouts to the car industry resemble nothing quite so much as those chaotic pallet-loads of greenbacks the US military was reputedly airlifting into Baghdad not so long ago.

This time, however, the Liberals proposed, very sensibly, to claw back $500 million of this. This seems to have needled Mr Bandt. Motivated by a touching faith in the industry's promises to green up its act, he wrote to industry minister Greg Combet urging him to take steps to lock this in against attempts by an incoming government to wind it back (subtext: in the face of inevitable election defeat.)

In this manner he has thoughtlessly betrayed our cause once again. The $500m of car handouts he is so passionate about retaining is $500m more than he has ever secured for bike infrastructure. Adam Bandt is now officially worse than useless for bikes.

In Adam Bandt, I regret to say, we do not yet have a politician who reflexively asks himself in the first instance 'How does this measure affect cycling?' or 'How can this situation be turned to good effect for bikes?'

The current fashion in figleaves for car handouts is to dress them up as pushing the industry in green and sustainable directions. And don't forget car industry lobbyists have had generations of experience in blackmailing Australian politicians, state and federal (and around the world.) This time, it would seem, they had merely to whisper the words 'electric car' into Adam's shell-like ear and he was as putty in their hands.

When Ben Chiffley kissed off on the first Holden in 1948 nobody had even heard of Toyota. And now do we really expect to compete with the likes of Kia and Great Wall? In the modern global economy it is highly marginal for Australia to be making any cars at all, electric, petrol or Stanley steamer, but to pay billions of dollars for the privilege is not, I believe, something our elected representatives should be countenancing any longer

And if it should ever prove, contrary to my better judgement, that electric cars really are the answer to all our prayers, then what's the big problem with simply importing them? If necessary much more effective, reliably targeted and cheaper government support could be given in the form of sales tax concessions, or outright rebates.

Let us put it in another way. Suppose you had $2.5 billion (or $3.5 billion, or even $500 million) to rein in our burgeoning transport emissions, what would be a better bet, a ) building bike paths that could be cutting emissions decisively and permanently within twelve months (without even mentioning any of the myriad side benefits) or b) gifting it to a bunch of deadbeat multinationals in the fond hope that one day, just maybe, they might make a few electric cars which we would then be obliged to plug in to Hazelwood?

The ever-present risk of bankruptcies aside, without the slightest shadow of doubt these companies will carry on producing only those models of cars they think they can sell. Why would they ever do otherwise? Trying to cut emissions with these truly epic amounts of corporate welfare for our rust belt car industry is such a jumble of woolly-headed thinking it is difficult to know where to begin.

The real background to all this is that Adam seems to have long harboured a powerful ambition to go down in history as the Father of the Electric Car in Australia (perhaps connected in some way with the fact that his great-uncle, Lewis Bandt, may have invented the ute.)

I'd like to suggest an additional or alternative ambition for you Adam, perhaps not quite so grandiose I admit, but in its own way useful nevertheless. Do you think you could possibly ever gain even a little satisfaction from getting your name on a plaque for a bit of bike path to replace the dreadful zig-zags at Flemington Bridge station on the grandly named Capital City Trail?

Or at the site of the Gipps street steps in Abbotsford, that absurd impediment on the morning commute of, among many others, Cadel Evans' Mum, still unfixed after decades of talk?

Or how about becoming a knight in shining armour along those echoing Canberra corridors for Melbourne BUG's outstanding vision for St Kilda Rd, as endorsed in an Age editorial as recently as last week?

These are merely three examples, right there, among hundreds, in your own electorate of Melbourne alone, worthy of energetic federal attention and funds.

The truly urgent task, however, it cannot be stressed enough, will be on our exploding urban fringes.

$500 million would be a good start.

Ok, Adam Bandt, in words of one syllable. The name of the game is to get federal funds, LOTS of federal funds, for bike infrastructure. The clock is ticking. Too much time has been lost.

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