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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 10 Hansard (24 September) . . Page.. 3648 ..

MRS DUNNE (continuing):

We are all aware of what has happened to CountryLink-the replacement of the service by buses through all of August and, when the trains came back into service, the abolition of the early morning service from Canberra to Sydney and the corresponding late afternoon or evening service from Sydney to Canberra. That means that people who want to travel to Sydney by rail for medical appointments will have to pay for a night's accommodation in the most expensive city in Australia or try to arrange their appointments in a much briefer period in the afternoon.

Before self-government, there was an agreement in place between the federal government and the New South Wales government that New South Wales was to provide a good service to the ACT. What is a good rail service? Certainly not what Bob Carr is providing to us in the ACT at the moment. A good rail service, I contend, is essential for Canberra's economy and is essential for the quality of life of many people in Canberra. The reason Fyshwick is located next to the train station is that it made sense to locate industries and semi-industrial businesses next to the rail link and transport materials to where they might be manufactured, put together, processed or sold.

The rail service is also very important for our tourist industry, especially for events such as Floriade that attract an older class of visitor to the ACT. I hardly need remind members of this place of the environmental benefits of rail over road. There are many research papers that show that a huge reduction in greenhouse gas emissions could be achieved if we put our freight on rail rather than on road. There is also the great saving of life and there are the great benefits of getting people around much more cheaply than they do on road.

CountryLink's bookings were so heavy during Floriade in the past year that it had had to put on extra services. After what we have seen, you do start to wonder what is driving the New South Wales government. I can assure you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I have received a trainload of calls on this matter and I know that all my colleagues in the opposition have as well.

I think that the people in this Assembly need to know that they are not from doctors, lawyers and stockbrokers; they are from the people that Ben Chifley would have called battlers, the people that Ben Chifley and his successors claimed to particularly represent. A lot of them are aged and disabled persons for whom the only option, because of a combination of health and financial reasons, is travel by train.

There are a vast number of people who for various reasons, mainly financial and health, as I have said, choose to travel by train and really are not in a position to travel by road or by air. As I have been out collecting signatures on this subject and talking to the people who ring me on this issue-I know that my colleagues have experienced the same things-the anecdotes have been endless.

An elderly lady who lives in a retirement village in south Canberra rang me the other day and said that rail is the only way she can get about. She cannot travel by plane because of her health. She has a son in the Southern Highlands and another one on the Central Coast. They come to visit her, but she would like to go to visit them. She said that, effectively, the changes in this regard have meant that she will no longer be able to travel

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