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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (4 September) . . Page.. 3020 ..

MR DE DOMENICO (continuing):

management practice. I am thankful that Mr Berry said that I have a certain amount of money in the budget to work with and I have kept to that amount of money. Thank you, Mr Berry, for calling me a good manager. If everybody else had done that when you were in government, we would not be in the mess that we are in now.

It is all about monitoring what your customers want. ACTION are now able to do this, thanks to the magnetic ticketing system and reviewing service delivery to meet demand. I say, "Hats off to Terry Connolly and David Lamont". The magnetic ticketing system is not something that this Government introduced. It was introduced under Ms Follett, by Mr Connolly and Mr Lamont, and we agreed with it. That magnetic ticketing system tells you exactly how many people are on a bus route and it tells you where those people want to go and when they want to go. That information was used by Mr Lamont and by Mr Connolly. There have been changes to the ACTION bus network since I came to Canberra in 1982. I do not know of any year in which changes have not been made to existing bus routes. What Mr Berry wants us to do is typical of Mr Berry. He says, "Do nothing. Change nothing. Do not listen to all the people. Just listen to a few selected ones that enable me, Mr Berry, to get my name in the newspapers and to get my picture in the newspaper. In other words, I shall use my own constituents for my own political purposes, so listen to me when I do that".

I was pleased to hear what Mr Moore said before, when he was introducing a Bill. He said that governments and other people in this Assembly have to make decisions based on two things: The benefit to the community and, conversely, the benefit to the individual member. I can tell you what is sacrosanct, No. 1, with Mr Berry. It is to forget the benefit to the community. As long as it benefits Mr Berry, then everything is okay. I can tell you, Mr Speaker, that this Government does not operate in that way. When I move an amendment to Mr Berry's motion, you will see why we believe what we believe.

Of course, if Mr Berry had his way, nothing would ever get changed. If the Government adopted Mr Berry's approach to management, ACTION, for example, would not be providing services to Gungahlin, to Banks or to any of Canberra's other newer suburbs. We would still be running off the 1989 bus timetable and totally ignoring changes in Canberra's demographics. This Government will not do that, Mr Berry. We would be totally ignoring the wishes of our constituents who use ACTION buses. By "our constituents" I mean all of our constituents. Sometimes I have made decisions in this place which affect people in my own electorate. Governments have a broader responsibility than just that little pocket of people who tend to vote for them from time to time. Mr Berry's attitude is to forget the community as long as his own personal internal feelings are met. This Government, Mr Berry, will not act in this way.

Some of the initiatives that are flagged in this internal working document, and that might be put forward for public comment, include the straightening out of some routes that meander in a time-consuming way through the suburbs. This is a result of surveying done by ACTION that shows that the majority of commuters are put off using buses because their routes take too long because, put simply, they are not direct enough. That is not what Mr Berry says; it is what the people who actually use the buses say. As a result of

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