Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (12 November) . . Page.. 3993 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

A public transport network is not a static thing. You cannot take a snapshot of it on a given day, in a given month, in a given year, and say, "They are all the problems. We have fixed them. We have got it fixed forever". You have to keep your eye on it and you have to make sure that you evolve to keep pace with the requirements of the city and its residents. That is what Roger Graham said. Of course, this Government is not only implementing his recommendations but also building on them.

The recommendations of the Graham report fell into four major areas: Network design, customer service, employee work practices and organisational structures. We are dealing with all of those, and we are dealing with them in the graduated approach that Mr Whitecross just said that we should adopt. Some of them we can deal with quickly; some of them take a little longer. In terms of customer service, you can relatively easily get information out to the consumers in a form that they find friendly and easy to use; but it takes a lot longer to restructure the network and to come up with a different timetable to run the buses to. You do not do the latter without a community consultation program to find out just what the people want and where they perceive the system is not working; otherwise, you are probably fixing things that do not need fixing and doing a Whitecross and not fixing the bits that do need fixing.

A major body of work has been commenced to plan the implementation of those recommendations. Community consultation has to play a major part in that process. That public consultation process has been going on, and is going on, all over Canberra as part of that task of obtaining input from the community as to what they want from the bus system. In fact, there is a meeting tonight in North Canberra. Mr Whitecross might care to go and find out what is really happening. This follows some other meetings over recent weeks in other areas, and quite a number more are planned over the next few weeks. While we are going through a comprehensive consultation process, we are not sitting on our hands.

Mr Whitecross seems to assume that nothing has happened with ACTION. If he thinks that nothing has happened with ACTION, how is it that, nine months ago, when I came into office, I was getting literally dozens of letters and phone calls of complaint every week and, in the last three weeks, I think I have had one letter from one lady where the bus was eight minutes late? What happened to that flood of letters and telephone calls that we were all getting a few months ago? If ACTION is not better today than it was nine months ago, why have all the complaints stopped? The complaints have stopped because ACTION management has moved quickly to address those things that can be addressed quickly.

Let us look at things that have been addressed in the last three months. We are planning for a new shopfront in the city interchange, which will be opened early next year. The first of the new bus stop information signs are about to be installed. In fact, I was up in Brisbane recently and I noticed some interesting bus information signs at bus stops out in the suburbs, and I inquired about them. They were there on trial. Mr Thurston has already been onto the Brisbane City Council to find out about them, to see whether we should adopt them here. We are working quickly to fill the gaps and make up for the deficiencies that Roger Graham identified.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .