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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 5 Hansard (8 May) . . Page.. 1760 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

this vague 90 per cent. As I said, perhaps the 10 per cent missing are the 10 per cent of people surveyed who do happen to suffer from asthma. I remind members that one in five, 20 per cent, of our community suffer from some kind of respiratory weakness. It is not an insignificant public health issue and it is something that you should be able to get an idea of when you look at the budget.

There are some measures in the budget which seem to be better. I will refer to them later when I am talking about the social area. There are examples that we can look at. I just think that there needs to be so much work done on how we are actually presenting the information, particularly the quality information. That goes back to what I said before about the Office of Sustainability. It is linked to that, because we are being told that that office is developing performance measures and indicators, which is what this is about. Triple bottom line reporting is seen to be difficult and tricky, and I am not saying that it is not, but a fundamental way of addressing it is by having measures such as this which actually mean something and communicate something to someone when they read the budget.

I note that a five-year recreation strategy is being developed to guide recreational developments in the ACT's natural areas. Programs involving the community and monitoring are to get under way during this year. While that is a good initiative, we need action now. I do not know why the government did not pick up this one earlier, because it is pretty obvious that, due to the fires, we have lost major areas that were being used for recreation.

I am talking particularly about mountain biking. Mountain bikers do not have the opportunities they had previously in Stromlo. I think that the southern riders have the potential to go to Tuggeranong Pines, but a lot of the people who were using Stromlo were coming from different areas and are now using nature parks. We need to have something happening immediately in that regard. If we do not, we are going to have more environmental damage in those areas and conflict with the various recreational users over the impact of their activities. That needs to be worked on with the community in a constructive way. I am not blaming anybody at this point. It is just an obvious result of the fires that does not seem to have been picked up by the government.

There are some good initiatives on transport in the budget, but it is largely steady as she goes. We welcome the decision to start implementing the first phase of the government's sustainable transport policy and we are pleased to see resourcing for additional bus services for Gungahlin, bus priority measures for roads that cause most delay for ACTION services, the introduction of pay parking in Barton, and demand responsive feeder services for late night travellers.

Oaks Estate still does not have ACTION bus services. As I have mentioned before in this place, residents there continue to be required to use the New South Wales service and are unable to access ACTION concessions in the way that other ACT residents can, which affects their ability to access the full range of services that are dependent on affordable transport to reach. As citizens of the ACT, they deserve that access.

We do not have new spending on cycling capital works to fill the identified gaps in the cycling network, nor do we have new expenditure on much needed public education and driver training to enhance the safety of cyclists on the road. But it is good that funding is

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