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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (18 June) . . Page.. 1724 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

Ms Horodny has an amendment she intends to put. By and large, we have no difficulty with that amendment; but at the appropriate time I will be moving some amendments to Ms Horodny's amendment, which I think she and I have agreed make it more acceptable. I will introduce those proposed amendments in due course.

MR SPEAKER: Ms Horodny, would you like to favour us with your comments and your amendment?

MS HORODNY (11.30): I will not move the amendment yet. I will just speak to the motion, Mr Speaker. We will support this motion. Obviously, it was our motion in the first instance and the issues raised in it are just as relevant now as when they were put up in 1995. We are a little confused, though, about what Mr Whitecross is saying about this motion, because it does not seem to lead to anything. The issue has arisen because of the proposal by Deane's Buslines to allow it to pick up and set down passengers within the ACT on its existing services between Civic and Woden and Queanbeyan. Mr Whitecross's motion still leaves this proposal up in the air, I believe, because it is unclear how this motion would apply to the Deane's proposal. I have foreshadowed an amendment to the motion that addresses the Deane's proposals so that the Assembly can clarify its views on this proposal.

It has been reported in the media recently that when I put up this motion I said that the issue was primarily about corporatisation, privatisation and leasing of services and structures of ACTION and was not about limiting incidental services provided by interstate operators who were already providing services into and out of the ACT. The question arises, then, of whether the Deane's proposal is just an incidental service that is providing an improved public transport service along the routes it is currently operating on anyway or whether it is taking away passengers that ACTION should rightly be collecting. If there is a demand within the ACT for better public transport services in this area, the question arises as to why ACTION is not providing this service.

There are already some ACTION routes that service the particular routes Deane's buses follow - the 313, the 360, the 361 and the 265 - and they provide services along part of the route between Queanbeyan and Civic on the weekends. Route 265 provides services along part of the route between Woden and Queanbeyan. Could the services on these routes be upgraded if there is indeed an unmet demand, as claimed by Deane's? At this stage, I do not know what the total answer to that is, which is why I am very happy for this trial to proceed to give us more information.

Given the release just yesterday of the review by Roger Graham of ACTION's services, which points out a range of problems with ACTION, we also need to know how the proposed upgrade of public transport services between Canberra and Queanbeyan interacts with the implementation of the Graham review. If there is to be a major restructure of ACTION's services, this is a good time to review the linkages to Queanbeyan and how ACTION could best provide those. It should be noted that, in geographic terms, Queanbeyan is closer to the centre of Canberra than are most of the outlying Canberra suburbs, and we know that there is considerable movement of people between the two cities for work and other activities. It is time we looked more closely at how the public transport systems in the two cities are interlinked and attempted to resolve

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