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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 2119 ..

MR KAINE (Minister for Urban Services) (5.13): As I indicated during the Estimates Committee hearings, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, although, as noted by Mr Whitecross, some functions have been transferred to Totalcare, the Urban Services Department still carries out a wide range of activities, all of which provide services directly to the residents of Canberra. I mentioned some of the statistics, and I will read them into the Hansard again today. Road Use Management, for example, issues 29,750 new registrations and registers 174,000 vehicles every year. It issues 100,000 parking infringement notices each year, and it collects - if it is of interest to the Opposition - over $69m in revenue every year.

Infrastructure Management maintains 2,500 kilometres of road, 2,700 kilometres of stormwater pipe and 174 sets of traffic lights. The only response from the Opposition to that is to whinge when a metre or two of the road is not white line-marked after it has been resurfaced. They maintain 2,500 kilometres of road every year.

Ms Reilly: And do a great job under trying circumstances.

MR KAINE: Yes, whinge; you have nothing to do but whinge about the trivial. CityScape Services, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, cleans 54 public toilet blocks daily - that will be of interest to the Opposition - maintains 380,000 street trees - Ms Horodny will like that bit - and maintains 350 hectares of sportsgrounds and 6,000 hectares of parkland and open space. That is no mean feat in maintenance. The Leader of the Opposition can only whinge because, when he drives down the road and some hoon has thrown a malted milk container out onto the street, we have not picked up the litter over all of those areas and all of those kilometres of road.

The department processes permits for 112 outdoor cafes each year. The ACT Library Service has 151,000 registered borrowers, makes around 2.3 million loans every year, and provides a home library service for 600 housebound people. The ACT Government Shopfront services 436,000 clients a year and collects around $100m in revenue on behalf of ACT government agencies. ACT Waste collects around 2,400 tonnes of household waste a month. Ms Horodny is concerned about the fact that we have a strategy that she thinks we are not putting into place quickly enough to reduce that to zero. It takes a long time to get a program up to speed. We have a strategy, at least, which is more than a lot of people around Australia have, that sets some objectives, and we are moving towards those objectives.

There is a register of 26,000 dogs out of an estimated dog population of 50,000 - we have a little way to go yet to pick up the rest of them - and we impound about 1,500 dogs a year. These are just examples of the kinds of services and the range of services that the Urban Services Department provides. Mr Whitecross made some reference to library services. We have not forgotten the library services. In fact, we changed the opening hours of libraries in January, and that was in response to a survey on users' preferences. Sunday opening hours are being trialled at the Woden library. If you listen to Mr Whitecross, we do not even know whether we have libraries. That is not the truth. We are constantly looking at these issues to make sure that the interests of the community and not the whinges of the Opposition are being taken care of.

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