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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (12 November) . . Page.. 3989 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

So, what has the Government been doing about this? Mr Kaine and his Government have shown little commitment to public transport. As they say, "If there is a horse called Self-interest in the race, you should back it". Mr Kaine might not care much about public transport; but he as sure as hell cares about being re-elected. The pollsters said, "This public transport issue is starting to bite. We are going to fix the supermarkets issue. We are going to do a backflip on that one".

Mr Kaine: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: Will Mr Whitecross affirm that he is not interested in getting re-elected?

MR WHITECROSS: It is always interesting to see Mr Kaine pop up, because you usually know that you are starting to get to the nub of the matter.

Mr Kaine: I have been here for 20 years, mate. How long have you been here?

MR WHITECROSS: Mr Kaine, we could talk about the last time I saw you bob up like this, which was when I reminded you about how you sent the report back to be rewritten, because the report had originally been written to wind down the public transport system, and then you received the results of the polling, which said, "Public transport is turning into a bit of a problem for the Government. We had better come up with a report which says that we are going to fix it".

Mr Kaine, to give him his due, does know about preserving his own political hide, and he knows that public transport is a problem in the ACT. So, he came out with a nice little report that said, "We see that there are a few problems with public transport. We do not know how that happened; but there seem to be a few problems with public transport in the ACT. Maybe we should make a few changes and fix a few things". So, Mr Kaine dutifully came into this place and said, "Yep, we agree with this report, and we are going to do everything in it. It is such a good report that we are going to do everything that is in this report to make sure that we improve the public transport system. A lot of it can be implemented this year. Mind you, all the really big improvements to public transport, like actually fixing the route structures and actually fixing the fare structures, we will leave until, say, July next year, after the election, because that will give us plenty of time to change our mind if we do get re-elected. But, in the meantime, it will sound good in our election material going into the next election".

But he did say that he was going to do some things, Mr Speaker. What did he say that he was going to do? He said that he was going to introduce more frequent services on selected routes during the day, between commuter peak services, which Graham said could be done at no additional cost except for 60c a kilometre running costs, which would be more than made up for by additional patronage. What else did he promise to do? He promised to trial some additional services later at night from night areas such as Civic and Manuka. We have the absurd situation where, if you are in Civic and you want to catch a bus to Woden, then you will not want to see the late movie, because the last bus leaves at 10.47 on a Friday night. Mr Kaine might be in bed before 10 o'clock at night; but I can tell you, Mr Speaker, that there are some people who actually like to go out on Friday night, and 10.47 pm is a little bit early to be shutting down the bus system.

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