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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 2117 ..

MR WOOD (5.05): There is one matter to which I want to draw Mr Kaine's attention. I received very prompt consideration from his predecessor nearly a year ago when I went to him with my anxiety about the number of road signs that had been severely damaged. They were not doing anything more than creating an eyesore and in some circumstances quite a road hazard, given the distorted, mangled remains. Mr De Domenico acted very promptly and attended to the list that I gave him and had them pulled out; but, as a measure of the department's efficiency in saving money rather than in signposting, it seems to me that a number of those, perhaps not all of them, were not replaced. The answer, in part, to the problem was simply to take them down and leave it at that. I do not think that that is a satisfactory response. I believe that they should have been replaced because they do serve an important purpose in the ACT.

I am sure Mr Kaine would be rather more careful in seeing that any request I bring to him will see a replacement. I sometimes wonder whether there is someone driving around this town in an old truck with a bullbar on it knocking down the signs. It seems to me that more signs have been damaged in the last year or two than I can ever recall before. It may be that I am just now paying attention to it and that it has always happened. I recognise that having to replace signs is a serious imposition on the finance of the Department of Urban Services. Anywhere I drive in town today there are signs down. That is not the fault of the Government. They have not done it. It is the fault of some pretty careless motorists. I hope they have damaged their cars considerably in the process - except, of course, that I suppose I pay greater insurance if they do, just as I pay greater insurance for every kangaroo that is hit and left on the roads.

Mr Humphries: No, they are not. They are taken away.

MR WOOD: Not very rapidly. I thought it was the process of decomposition that was taking them away. Mr Humphries, I will bring you a list of damaged road signs again in the near future. I hope that with the new administration they will all be replaced.

MS REILLY (5.08): One of the issues that I raised during the Estimates Committee process was the slow rate at which the white lines were being put back on the roads after the new surface had been put down. We had a fascinating discussion about the weather. I was extremely interested last week to note that neither the Minister nor any of the public servants who were there seemed to know that in fact the white paint marker machine was out of service for a time. There was a picture of the reconstructed machine, which is able to spit down special white paint, in the Canberra Times last week. It appears that the Canberra Times is more aware of what is going on in the lines and signs area than the Minister. The reconstruction appears to be the reason why there were some delays in putting down the white lines after the resurfacing that was done so expeditiously because the weather was so great last summer. It is quite amazing that no-one mentioned the breakdown of the machine or the reconstruction that was going on. The Minister and his senior advisers from the bureaucracy appeared not to know that this machine was broken. That surely is an obvious answer as to why there was a delay in putting down the white lines that are so important for road safety. You do wonder, following on from previous statements, whether the Minister knows what is going on in any part of his bureaucracy. It was interesting that they were quite happy to burble along about why it might happen and talk about the weather and whatever, without finding out what was going on from the people who do the work.

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