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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (23 May) . . Page.. 1573 ..

MR MOORE: No, it is not an acceptable target, Mr Corbell. Step by step we will try to bring down the number of people who are waiting. We will do this as effectively as we can. When the Assembly committee looked at this issue, they realised just how difficult it was. One of their recommendations was to do with pooling. We will not be able to pool patients unless we have the support of the specialists. The last thing I want is for the specialists to put down their tools and say, "We are not going to do that."

It is important for the specialists to understand that they do not own the patients. When we are talking about a public patient, we are talking about ensuring that the patient is treated by somebody who is appropriately qualified, but the difference between a private patient and a public is that, whereas the public patient is entitled to somebody appropriately qualified, the private patient is entitled to the doctor of their choice. There is an issue of ownership of patients. It is an issue the committee that Mr Wood chaired dealt with. It is a difficult issue, but we are working to try to resolve it in a collaborative way with the doctors involved.

MR WOOD: Mr Speaker, my question is to the Minister for Urban Services. Minister, despite repeated and prolonged criticism of the new bus shelters at the Civic interchange, the redevelopment is going ahead unaltered. The new shelters-and I use the word "shelters" in inverted commas-do not shelter commuters from wind or rain or sun. In fact, I do not know what their function really is. Maybe this is a modern art installation and the shelter function is a thing of the past. ACTION commuters, who are already an endangered species, will not be encouraged to increase their numbers during winter. Without proper shelter, perhaps they will die out altogether. Minister, on a frosty morning like this, why have the bus shelters not been designed to provide shelter?

MR SMYTH: It is a good question from Mr Wood. There is a lot of misinformation about the effectiveness of the new shelters. It is important that when you design a shelter you take into account a number of considerations. We looked at providing shelter from the sun, wind and rain and the ability for passengers to move onto buses without getting wet. We also took into account security concerns. The federal Minister for Justice, Senator Vanstone, recently released a report about the perception-not the truth-that it is unsafe to travel on public transport at night. We have very few incidents on our buses at night. Interchanges across the country are seen as places that are not safe.

When you set out to refurbish an area like the Civic bus interchange, you have to take into account all of the things that need to be considered. You have to look at the new shelters against the heritage-listed Melbourne Building. You have to provide protection from the sun and rain. You have to make sure that the shelters are secure and that they blend in with the city. In the main, they do this.

Part of the criticism is that you do not get a shadow to sit in when you are sitting in the shelter in the sunlight. The glass removes more than 99 per cent of the UV rays from incident light. On its own, the glass will also remove about 44 per cent of the infrared incident light or solar radiation. I do not have the technical data with me here, but the tests we did show that the new shelters are one to two degrees cooler than the old shelters. You have to combat perception. The glass has some tint and we will increase the tint. The set-up of the shelters is such that they are cooler.

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