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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 2118 ..

MS REILLY (continuing):

I have had some discussions with the people who work in the lines and signs area and they were very interesting. We should pay some attention to these people because they are important public servants in the ACT. Of course, they did not rate a mention when we talked about it in the Estimates Committee hearing, even though this Government is so keen always to tell us about how wonderful public servants are. These are very important employees of this Public Service in the ACT because they are the face of government. They are out in the community every day where people can see them at work. They are not lucky enough to be able to hide away in offices where people cannot find them or cannot get through to them on the Department of Urban Services telephone system. You get a prize if you get a person to answer the phone.

Mr Humphries: Or get through the Assembly security system.

MS REILLY: I am not interested in that. That is your problem, Mr Humphries.

It was interesting to talk to the people who work there. This is a dedicated group of people who are skilled and have expertise that has not been recognised. Instead of finding out what was going on, you just blamed the weather. These people are concerned about the reduction in dollars being allocated to this area of government expenditure. It has continued to reduce. They are professional in the work they do and they are upset to find that they cannot do it to the standard they would like because there is not enough money. They have contracts that tell them what they can do, but this is not sufficient to do a job that reflects well on their work or reflects well on the Government and whether the Government is also concerned about issues of safety.

If there are no lines on new roads it is difficult for people to know where to drive, and any road safety officer will tell you how dangerous that is. As we saw in a recent case in America, if signs are not up, that can be extremely dangerous. It is dangerous, anyway. Any of us, walking or driving around in the ACT, would know that. Mr Wood just raised that issue as well. Because of the squeezing of dollars in this area, these people are not able to do the job to the standard to which they want to do it, and they find this very concerning and of great distress to them. They do not have sufficient money to do what they want to do and to the standard to which they want to do it.

Mr Kaine, I think you should go out and talk to them and find out what their concerns are, instead of using some airy-fairy thing or the weather and leaving God to worry about what is happening within the roads area. You should have found out what was really going on, looked to the workers there and listened to what they can tell you about the system. The other thing I am sure we all notice is that if you drive around anywhere in Canberra there are still squiggles all over the road. We still have a situation where one of the important Territory assets is deteriorating and we seem to be spending little money on maintaining it. These are grave concerns and I think the Minister should investigate further.

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