Page 3722 - Week 12 - Thursday, 25 November 2021
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if she has things that she has researched, she will bring them to the table. I am assuming the report has not been watered down, because if this is the watered-down version—phew!—I want to see the original.
I am a big fan of Dr Paterson’s report for a number of reasons. First and foremost, as we move towards net zero emissions in the ACT it is clear to everyone that transport emissions will be the key. And I think much of the push will involve getting Canberrans, male and female, onto public transport and into active travel. Around Australia, most of us have moved to that position in the debate, which has been really good to see. Dr Paterson has identified that women will play a major role in that shift, and their needs, and what motivates them, are often different to those of men. This report is extremely important, and it identifies a number of key directions for policy makers.
I am not going to lie; one of the other reasons I am such a big fan of Dr Paterson’s report it that it is absolutely damning of the current bus network. It is scathing of the current bus network. When you go through the report and look at the balance of the comments, there are major sections of this report which look as if they could have come from us. Seriously, it could have been a Liberals report. But it did not come from us; it came from a Labor MLA, and I hope that this sort of criticism of the government’s failed current bus network may lead to a rethink of sorts, because this voice of dissent is coming from within the machine.
Now, granted, when I said “voice of dissent” I meant that what Dr Paterson is doing is giving a voice to people who have responded to the survey. So I am not saying, necessarily, that Dr Paterson’s is a voice of dissent. It is in that vein that I move the amendment that has been circulated in my name. I move:
After paragraph (1)(k), insert:
“(l) on balance, Dr Paterson’s report is quite damning of the bus network for southside users, containing no less than 180 negative comments and reflections from survey respondents;”.
It is a fairly simple amendment. If you want to see what it looks like to throw the transport minister under a bus, this is what it looks like. There are some holes in this report. Dr Paterson mentions more female drivers and a number of things about maps in the app, and I think one of the things that shines through from this report is that Dr Paterson is not a regular user of our buses, because if she was, she would see the large number of female bus drivers and she would be genuinely using the apps and maps that are already available.
The Paterson report got 100 responses in total. I note that the TCCS travel survey from four years ago got several thousand responses. Those responses, by and large, said the same thing but they were ignored by Labor and the Greens. This is a government preoccupied with toys and technology that offer little or no benefit for the majority of Canberrans. This report ratifies the notion that we have a city-wide transport network in chaos, run by a minister who is out of touch with community sentiment and with no real interest in listening.
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