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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (12 November) . . Page.. 4041 ..

MR SPEAKER: The question now is: That Ms Horodny's amendment No. 2 be agreed to.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

MR SPEAKER: The question now is: That the motion, as amended, be agreed to.

MR WHITECROSS (4.20): Mr Speaker, I rise to conclude the debate. I will come back to the Minister in a minute; but a couple of other contributions that were made along the way need to be addressed. The first is poor old Mr Stefaniak's contribution. Mr Stefaniak explained that the 10 per cent cut to school bus services had nothing to do with the Government; it was all down to the school bus liaison committee. He gave us a long dissertation from his brief about the school bus liaison committee. Unfortunately, the school bus liaison committee has nothing to do with it. The decision to cut buses is a policy decision that was made by this Government not to run school buses where they had fewer than 20 customers. Of course, Mr Stefaniak does not know that. He knows only what is written in the brief, and that was not written in the brief; so he did not know it. Unfortunately for Mr Stefaniak, he was wrong again. The fact remains that school bus services have been reduced by 10 per cent, as we said in the motion. Interestingly, the Graham report does have something to say about school bus services. It says that parents of school children usually require services that travel between home and school that avoid any crossing of roads and avoid interchanges at locations perceived to be unsafe.

Interestingly, in introducing the new school bus timetable at the beginning of the year, the Government did not seem to think it was any sort of problem having primary-school-age children - in fact, Kindergarten, Year one and Year two children - crossing roads in order to get to school, because they wanted them to catch a route bus rather than a school bus. I am afraid that Mr Stefaniak, as usual, is not really across it and, because it was not in his brief, he got his facts wrong.

Mr Hird: He was certainly spot on the money.

MR WHITECROSS: Mr Hird just had something to say. I really have to focus for a moment on what Mr Hird had to say, because Mr Hird made an important policy announcement on behalf of the Government which I think we all should take notice of. Mr Hird said that we are going to have a summer timetable this year, just like we have had in previous years. That is what Mr Hird said. Mr Hird's office will have to run round to Hansard and try to get them to put a "not" in there somewhere, because what Mr Hird has just announced is that the disastrous holiday timetable we have had for the last two years will be on again this year. Maybe he wants to be a Minister instead of Speaker, Mr Speaker.

Mr Kaine: I think you misunderstood him.

MR WHITECROSS: I think not. I think he just did not read it properly.

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