Page 1264 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 16 April 1991
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I have to say that those are issues which have not previously been matters brought to my attention; they are not matters that I have had people ask me to review. Mr Moore is the first person to have done that, apart from a letter that I have seen today that has been sent to the Canberra Times, and it may be that we should consider that there should be some change of policy in this matter. But the present position is not to do that. I will consider whether there should be changes in the appeal structure, but I cannot promise that any particular development would occur along the lines that Mr Moore has suggested. It may be that we should, in fact, adopt some different approach to appeals, but I cannot say that I have any personal inclination towards putting, for example, parents or school board chairs or whatever onto appeal processes. That might not be appropriate.
Vehicle Inspections - Waiting Times
MR PROWSE: My question without notice is to the Minister for Finance and Urban Services, Mr Duby. Would the Minister please advise the Assembly of the measures he is implementing to reduce the waiting times for vehicle inspections at the ACT vehicle registries?
MR DUBY: Thank you, Mr Prowse, for the question. In recent times there has been, as members are well aware, an increase in the waiting time taken for vehicles, particularly at the Dickson motor testing station, to go through their registration check. Indeed, the time taken for some vehicles has been up to two hours on some days.
There have been a number of factors which have been instrumental in that time delay slowly being increased from what is the normal average, I believe, of something less than 30 minutes to something over two hours. One of the major factors has been, of course, that whilst the requirement for vehicles to be registered goes on on a 365-day basis - in other words, as their anniversaries arrive the cars are due to be inspected and tested - in recent times, particularly around this time of year, there are quite a number of four-day working weeks. For a period of almost a month there were four-working-day weeks - - -
Mr Kaine: And another one next week.
MR DUBY: And another one, of course, next week, as the Chief Minister says. That means that, for that period of time, in four days the inspectors have to go through a period of inspecting 20 per cent more vehicles. As a result of that, the Government has decided to introduce procedures to, first of all, introduce a random inspection system for vehicles - including all private cars, motor cycles and commercial vehicles under two tonnes tare - which are less than six years old. One in every 20 of
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