Page 788 - Week 05 - Thursday, 6 July 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR SPEAKER: I am unaware of the circumstance with regard to legislation, but let me assure you, the members of the public and members of the Assembly that the daily Hansard is available to members. The daily Hansard is available for perusal in the Hansard office. The reason why this is not available for general distribution is that it is a proof copy only, and therefore we should not let it go outside the Assembly. But anyone who is interested in looking at it can do so in the company of the Hansard staff. Also, we have available the Weekly Hansard, which takes some time to produce. That is available to members of the public who request a copy of it.
So I do not see that there is any problem with holding back of information as printed in Hansard to report the events in this house. I think it is open to the public, and I do not see that we have held it back in any manner because of legislation being in place or not being in place. I hope that answers your question.
Bus Service
MR DUBY: My question is addressed to the Minister for Housing and Urban Services, and it is in relation to the publication Bus Book 2. Given that commuters need to purchase this book which contains details of every available bus service in Canberra, even though they may need details of only a few, I would like to know: Is a profit made from this publication or is it provided at a subsidised cost to commuters? Can persons who merely wish to obtain information on one particular bus route do so without purchasing the complete book of timetables?
MRS GRASSBY: I thank Mr Duby for the question. There were 60,000 copies of Bus Book 2 printed. These were printed by the Government Printing Office; the cost was $160,000. When they were sold - and after paying commission to newsagencies and such - there was $90,000 revenue. This went back into ACTION. So we lost money on the deal. The book still returns a little money. We are printing the sheets which are free and they will be distributed free.
The one thing about having the books printed was it gave people an opportunity not to have to go out and find all the sheets; they had them in one book. But the other point is that, when this book was released, I arranged for copies to be sent to organisations such as ACTCOSS and Jobless Action so people who really needed the book but who could not afford to buy it could have access to it. Also, I sent copies to all the Federal members' and senators' offices, asking that they keep them in their offices so that they could be photocopied if somebody needed a page desperately and it could be sent out.
When I sent them out to the organisations, I also suggested they keep one copy in the office for this reason. If there
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .