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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 2112 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

The Minister seemed to have no opinion on such a major issue as whether the Government should allow lots of motor vehicles to drive up and down in the bus lanes, slowing down the buses.

His explanation for why his department was looking at it when he had not asked them to look at it and did not have an opinion on whether they should or not was that someone had asked the department to look at it so they were looking at it. Never mind whether he thought it was prima facie a good idea or not. He had no opinion on the subject. He had not thought about it at all. He did not really even know about it, but his department were doing it anyway because someone had asked the question.

You have to wonder about a Minister who allows his department to operate on the basis that if somebody asks a question he devotes the resources of his department to looking into the matter regardless of the prima facie merits of it. It would not take much examination to realise that running a lot of other vehicles up and down transit lanes in peak hour would slow down public transport and make the buses less attractive. We know that this Government has a policy of trying to reduce the quality of the transport system in the ACT. They have been doing it for 21/2 years. Now we discover that this Minister has a policy that says, "If someone asks my department a question, then I can devote departmental resources to looking at it even if it is a dumb idea".

In a similar vein earlier in the year the question of contracting out the management of cemeteries came up. At the time the question was asked: Why is the Government considering contracting out the management of cemeteries? The answer was that someone had made them an offer. That was meant to be a good enough reason for looking into something. Someone came to them and said, "We would like to manage your cemeteries". They said, "No worries. We will get right into that. We will commission some studies by our department into that. That would be a really good idea. If you want to do it, then we will be in it". All you have to do to get lots of taxpayers' resources devoted to investigating your pet project is to make an offer to the Government. Ask the department and, sure enough, they will go off and look at it. I am not sure that I would consider that to be too good a way of running a department. No wonder the head of ACT Tourism goes around the Minister when he wants to get something really important done. The Minister thinks his department is there just to answer hypothetical questions asked by various people in the community.

I notice, too, in the budget papers that once again the Government is treading water on libraries. This is the Government that took $1m out of libraries two years ago, reduced the quality of library services and reduced opening hours. They are not willing to provide services. As we know, the Chief Minister's policy is that it is not the role of government to provide services. They have been winding back library services, just as they have been winding back public transport and other services in the Territory. Over the life of this Government we have seen a considerable winding back of the basic community services provided by the Government.

I do not know about other members in this place, but I know that my office constantly receives complaints about neglect of maintenance of roads and lack of line marking on roads. It was explained to us in the Estimates Committee hearings that the reason why there was not more line marking on roads was that it had not rained enough;

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