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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (4 September) . . Page.. 3023 ..

MR DE DOMENICO (continuing):

the routes should be changed. They will be changed every year. Mr Berry went out there and said, "There will be wholesale cuts. Buses will not stop where they are supposed to stop. Elderly citizens will have to walk 500 metres, instead of getting picked up at the front of their houses". That is all absolute nonsense, all for the political purposes of Mr Berry. Nothing has been decided. All of the proposals coming out of the current review will be the subject of a public consultation process - just as reviews have been over a number of years - to commence within a few weeks.

Mr Berry will argue that his motion, his media beat-up and his scaremongering are all about ensuring that the Government takes notice of the people's wishes in developing the 1997 network timetable. There is one thing that it seems Mr Berry and I agree on; that is that the people's wishes need to be taken into account. All the people's wishes need to be taken into account. The difference is that this Government and ACTION undertake continual assessment of commuter patterns, patronage levels, et cetera, because at the end of the day it is what the ACTION people and the ACTION users want that must prevail, not what Mr Berry wants and not what I want. The result of this review will not be a cut in services but a better, more targeted service with buses going where Belconnen residents want them to go. As I said yesterday, why let the truth get in the way of a Chronicle story?

While I am on my feet, I propose the following amendment to Mr Berry's motion:

Paragraph (2), after the word "Kippax", omit "are not cut from the abovementioned suburbs", substitute "are not out of proportion with services to other group centres".

Mr Berry and other members of this Assembly should realise that not all small business people in Belconnen reside in the Kippax shopping centre. There are other small businesses in Belconnen that deserve the same sorts of services currently enjoyed elsewhere. In fact, there are proportionally more services going to Kippax than to the other shopping centres. It is up to this Government and this Assembly to make sure that the people of Belconnen have an equitable distribution of bus services to all shopping centres. That is not just what we want. ACTION has undertaken a study with the ticketing machine system introduced by the Follett Labor Government, which we all supported. The people who want to use the services are saying, "Please, make certain changes. Have a look at the demographics and have a look at the inequity that currently exists and make sure that all shopping centres in Belconnen, in the electorate of Ginninderra, are treated equitably in terms of ACTION bus services". I commend my amendment to the house.

MR HIRD (11.30): Mr Berry, after being in this chamber for about eight years, has finally found that there is a problem with bus services in Belconnen, in our electorate. He is wrong again. Mr Berry should have picked the phone up and had a conversation with the departmental liaison officers in Mr De Domenico's offices, and he would have found that the simple fact is that the bus number is changing from 409 to 407. Let us ask why we are streamlining the bus services in Belconnen, or anywhere in the ACT. The fact is that when we came into office the cupboard was bare. As a matter of fact, this Territory had been running on the Bankcard. Money was running out at a huge rate. We needed to take the helm and put this Territory back into financial shape.

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