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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (4 September) . . Page.. 3030 ..

MS FOLLETT (continuing):

The Minister and ACTION have said that the residents of the Causeway can walk the 600 metres or more to Kingston or to Wentworth Avenue and catch a bus if they can find one. That is not acceptable any more so in the Causeway than it would be for the residents of Belconnen. Many of the residents of the Causeway are elderly; many of them have disabilities; many of them are single parents. Mr Speaker, if you have ever tried to walk 600 metres, crossing a major thoroughfare such as Wentworth Avenue, with small children and your weekly groceries, I can tell you that it is no easy task at all.

What has happened to the people of the Causeway is, I believe, the agenda for the rest of Canberra. It is even worse than that. When I wrote to the Minister for details on the services that had been cut, I raised the service that the people of the Causeway refer as the workman's bus. That is the bus at around 7.30 in the morning that used to come through and take all the people who were going to work or had to go to an interchange to catch another bus. My constituents had said to me, "This bus has not been turning up. It is in the Bus Book, but it does not turn up". The Minister wrote back and said, "It should not be in the Bus Book. It is a mistake. That service has been cancelled". The residents of the Causeway have lost what they referred to as the workman's bus, a service which they had relied upon completely for many years. No debate, no discussion, no rationale; it is gone. That is what has happened in the Causeway. That is what will happen throughout Canberra unless people show the kind of vigilance and fervour demonstrated in the motion before us today.

Members should support this motion, and they should take every opportunity to keep ACTION on its toes and to keep ACTION delivering what is an essential service in our community. If that service is allowed to fall into decay, as seems to be the case, if people realise that they can no longer rely upon their public transport system, people will desert it in droves. I used buses in Canberra for something like 30 years. If your service is cancelled, I know the crisis of confidence that that engenders and the way you go out and make other arrangements. You try to get a lift, or you buy a car.

It would be a catastrophe if that were to become widespread, because not only would ACTION be showing even lower returns on the services that it runs, but we would also see increased numbers of cars on our roads, at even further risk to our environment and to our municipal budget, because there is a cost to maintaining roads in the state necessary for buses to run on them. That cost is never counted in this debate. It would be a catastrophe for people in our community at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale who cannot afford a car - for the many retired people, people on pensions and single parents who have no prospect of buying a car and for the students who are on very limited means. I hope that it is not the agenda of this Government to run ACTION into such a state of decay that it is not used and not relied upon. That would be a disaster for our community. I support this motion and any other such motion that calls on ACTION to do its job as the community sees fit.

MR STEFANIAK (Minister for Education and Training) (12.01): I hardly think it is the aim of this Government to do anything other than improve ACTION. I would hope that would apply to whatever government was in. Ms Follett mentioned a number of things which I found quite interesting. To my knowledge, she is right in saying that no bus service provided by a municipal authority anywhere in the world actually makes a profit.

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