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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (4 September) . . Page.. 3026 ..

MS HORODNY (continuing):

a huge cost to maintain. You were absolutely right. We agreed. Where is the Government's emphasis on public transport? That is the whole point here. What we should be doing is looking at ways of getting more people to fill the buses and not saying, "That bus is half empty and therefore we should cut it out". That is what you are saying. Let us be clever, Mr De Domenico - there are clever ways of trying to get people onto buses - rather than cutting out the service, which means that the people who do use it then have to find alternative means of transport.

Public transport is obviously a very necessary part of our transport infrastructure, and the promotion of public transport has very important environmental and social advantages which are not adequately recognised by government. There is a real social equity issue here that has to be fully addressed. Public transport is indispensable for those many people in the community who do not have access to a car or who cannot drive, particularly senior citizens. That is what this particular motion is about. Those senior citizens will otherwise have great difficulty in getting from their homes to their shops and to other local community services. Public transport provides a public service to the community. It cannot be regarded simply as a business that has to pay its way. Access to affordable and convenient transport within the city must be regarded as a right of citizens. We are a community here. We are citizens of that community, not just customers. We have to really modify this new ideology - - -

Mr De Domenico: We are also ratepayers.

MS HORODNY: We are ratepayers. That is exactly right. We are not just customers. We are part of a community, and we have made decisions about providing public transport and public services to this community because this community needs them. We said recently in a matter of public importance about public transport that the Government should congratulate users of public transport rather than penalise them by cutting services and by increasing bus fares. Public transport is more fuel efficient and takes up less road space than the equivalent number of cars. People who use public transport instead of private cars have prevented millions of tonnes of pollutants and greenhouse gases from being emitted into the atmosphere. They have saved millions of litres of petrol, obviously conserving a non-renewable resource and reducing petroleum imports. Yet all those additional costs to the community are not factored in when we look at the costs of public versus private transport. That is something that this Government has to look at seriously. Public transport users have also delayed the need to build more freeways, arterial roads and parking spaces to accommodate more cars.

The review's emphasis on cutting services to Kippax shops is a real concern. The Government has recently gone to considerable trouble to promote local shopping centres and restrict trading hours in the town centres. We certainly have supported you on that. It would be illogical for the Government now to make it more difficult for people to actually get to these local shopping centres. Kippax in particular - - -

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