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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 144 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

takes into consideration everybody's needs. We thought that the Transport Reform Advisory Committee was formed to look at these sorts of issues. We were hopeful. We were asking these questions at the beginning of our time in the Assembly. We were told by Mr De Domenico that it is fine; that we have this group, the Transport Reform Advisory Committee, together, and it is going to be looking at a transport strategy for Canberra. As we heard yesterday in this place, Ms Horodny asked the new Minister what has happened to that group. It has been disbanded and we do not know why yet. We have not got an answer to that and that is very disappointing.

Mr Humphries is saying that our motion is too difficult, that it would take years to complete what we have asked for. I guess that that once again is a question of priorities. It does not have to take years if the will is there. There do have to be strategies developed so that we do encourage this so-called revolutionary change or paradigm shift that Mr Humphries has alluded to. There are ways of encouraging people to use public transport. We do not have to subsidise and facilitate to the degree that we do the use of cars by individuals. There are a number of ways that we can look at it. It is about employment being located appropriately. It is about park and ride facilities. It is about parking costs. It is about bus lanes. There are many ways that you can bring about a change in the transport pattern and usage within a city and I expect this Government to do something much more constructive and far-sighted on this issue.

I repeat that we are not saying no roads, and the amendments that are being proposed here are really about watering down what we are saying. It is all so very disappointing. We have in our motion that Majura Road be looked at. What is the point of continuing this consultation where it is supposed to be asking the community to look at the options? We continue to spend money asking them to look at a very limited range of options. Why is that money well spent? I do not see the logic in that. It would be much better to delay the process until we have an opportunity to give the community greater options to look at. Then Maunsell will not have been wasted on this consultancy. We will have some meaningful discussion across all the issues.

One of the other really important issues that you need to talk about here is that, if we do not take on these initiatives and come up with different solutions, this society is going to be much poorer socially. We have had a lot of discussion in this place about what is happening to disadvantaged people and their ability to move around the city because of weakening bus services. That is not going to improve unless we see definite strategies for encouraging and increasing the use of public transport so that not only the disadvantaged people will be using buses when they are lucky enough to be able to catch one.

I notice here that there is often a joke about when you last caught a bus. Members know well that I catch buses regularly if I am not riding. It is not such a bad thing to do. I am a busy person as well and I have meetings to go to as well. There is this sort of attitude, which I find very disturbing, that we are all a little bit too important to use buses. I think as leaders in this community it would be much more worthy if you did stand up and say, "I will continue to patronise the bus service to set an example and so that we can see that buses become viable and we have much greater use of them". There obviously are a lot of planning decisions that will also facilitate the use of the public transport system. They have not been made in the past and it is time that they were.

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