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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (4 September) . . Page.. 3028 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

I do not have a problem with the part of paragraph (2) of Mr Berry's motion that calls on the Government "to review this proposal". When it goes on to use the words "and ensure that services to Kippax are not cut from the abovementioned suburbs", you then have a situation where Mr Berry seeks effectively to dictate to the Government. From my own discussions with Mr Berry, I believe that he is saying that he is not trying to dictate; he is actually trying to raise the issue and make sure the Government looks at it.

Mr Berry: They exercise their own judgment on the issue.

MR MOORE: He now interjects to say, "They exercise their own judgment". I do not think that is quite good enough. The amendment put up by Mr De Domenico says that it is not about whether to cut or not to cut; it is about ensuring that the services to Kippax are not out of proportion with services to other group centres. The difficulty with this amendment is that it is a fairly generic thing which is almost meaningless. It worries me that somebody might come back and say, "We have one more bus service going to Dickson than we have going to Kippax; therefore, it is out of proportion". The flip argument to that is that Dickson is a bigger group centre. What are we going to do there?

There is a series of issues that bring me back to the point that we are dealing with a jigsaw of bus routes and bus services. It is for those reasons that I am inclined to vote against the whole motion. Mr De Domenico's amendment is that they not be out of proportion with the services to other group centres. It is a fairly generic sort of amendment, but I suppose it would work. It would require him to review the general proposals. That is certainly the goal that Mr Berry is after.

Mr Berry: No; that asks us to endorse his cuts.

MR MOORE: I hear the interjection that Mr Berry is making, namely, that effectively we would wind up endorsing Mr De Domenico's cuts. That takes me back to the position I started with - that it is appropriate for this Assembly to call on the Minister to review something like a specific bus service where it has been cut, but it is not up to us to dictate this sort of measure when there are so many other things that hang off a single change to a bus service.

Ms Horodny put the Greens' perspective and her perspective. In effect, she said, "Let us increase all bus services". I understand where Ms Horodny is coming from. But that has budget implications. Mr De Domenico recognises that it is the Greens' perspective. In fact, it is my perspective that if we can increase public transport we should, but that has to be done within the budget context. Mr Speaker, having gone through that process, I believe the appropriate thing for me to do is to support the Government amendment. That will actually bring about a review of this proposal. However, I am still prepared to listen to what Mr Berry has to say. It may well be that it is better simply to knock off altogether the motion that Mr Berry has put up, with the understanding that the Minister will actually realise that there is a need to look at this and to review it in the context of the whole range of bus services in that area.

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