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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (4 September) . . Page.. 3019 ..

MR DE DOMENICO (continuing):

Mr Berry "notes proposed changes to the 409 service which would severely limit access to the aged residents of Collingrove Court in Scullin". He "therefore calls on the Government to review this proposal and ensure that services to Kippax are not cut from the abovementioned suburbs" - namely, Charnwood, Flynn, Fraser, Melba, Scullin, Hawker, Weetangera and Cook - "and access to public transport for the aged such as the residents of Collingrove Court is not reduced". Let us have a look at the point that Mr Berry makes in the media that services should not be cut from these suburbs. It does not matter if no-one is using these services. It does not matter if the residents of the Belconnen area or of these suburbs mentioned by Mr Berry want different services. The facts are just not relevant to Mr Berry. He does not think about all the facts about what the people want.

Mr Berry reports in the Canberra Chronicle today that he has 950 signatures on a petition. He presented it this morning. Let us not worry about the other 90,000 residents who live in Belconnen. The 950 signatories who shop at Kippax and probably own shops at Kippax as well have been sucked in by the scaremongering of Mr Berry. It is not their fault. They have been told selective facts by Mr Berry, just as the CFMEU members were told selective facts last week by members of that union. Notice that I am being very careful, Mr Speaker, not to call anyone here a liar, because of your ruling before.

Let us look at the internal working document leaked to Mr Berry. The document, he claims, has details of all these cuts to services. Let me quote from the full document. Under the word "Aim" it says:

Recent Australian Bureau of Statistics journey to work surveys of Canberra commuters have revealed that a major disincentive to travelling on ACTION services is the high travelling time as a result of indirect bus routes.

The aim of this proposal is to increase the attractiveness of many Belconnen feeder services to ACTION passengers by reducing the journey length, travelling time, and by improving directness between Belconnen suburbs and Belconnen Interchange.

A further aim is to reduce costs to ACTION by eliminating duplication and overservicing of some suburbs, by re-routing Belconnen services to achieve a uniform level of service, closer to the ACTION service standards, and closer to the level of servicing provided elsewhere in Canberra.

What does that mean? It means that we are making sure that every area of Canberra gets basically the same amount of servicing; that no one area is overserviced in comparison to others. There are a number of proposals contained in that document. There is rerouting of services. There is the deletion of some routes and their replacement with others. There is an extension of some routes and there is a retention of extensions to others, and so the document goes on. As I said yesterday, this is all about good

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