Page 1743 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 6 June 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
a regulation of powers to enter and search premises, and the committee considered that such powers should only be provided in primary legislation. I support that very strongly, having had two terms in this place on the equivalent of the legal affairs committee where we talked about the infringement of or impingement on people’s rights. Those matters, whether they be legitimate or potentially illegitimate, need to be debated in this chamber, not left to the chance picking up of a piece of subordinate legislation. I appreciate the support of the opposition on this particular approach.
If it is in primary legislation, it is drawn to the attention of the Assembly in debate on the passage of that bill. If it is in subordinate legislation, there is a potential and a possibility that the chamber will not pick that particular piece up within that subordinate legislation. Therefore, using a motion to disallow engenders debate on it. So I am very, very happy to remove the possibility that that will just slip through the cracks.
The bill relocates, as I said, the regulation into the act. Similar powers, of course, are to be located in the Road Transport (Vehicle Registration) Act in relation to authorised premises for vehicle inspections. The legislation ensures good regulatory practice by moving them into primary legislation, as I said. Further changes detailed in this bill are important in ensuring governments are able to pursue desirable policy outcomes in the taxi industry in the future without unnecessary and unhelpful legislative restrictions.
I address a couple of things that were said. Firstly, for the benefit of Dr Foskey, who says it is too expensive to catch a bus from the airport into Civic: if you are an airline passenger coming from interstate, you can get an airliner bus now from the airport into Civic for $7.00. It leaves on the half hour, at something like 28 minutes past the hour and 58 minutes towards the o’clock. It is a half-hour service, coming out of the airport from roughly where the taxi rank is. For those people who are travelling, it is $7.00 to the city.
Mr Pratt: How many hours a day does it run?
MR HARGREAVES: I am not quite sure how many hours a day. It is run by Deane’s Buslines. It is there for all aircraft that land with passengers in them. It may be 11.30—I am not quite sure about those times—but it is designed to give those passengers coming in by airline an alternative to taxi transport or limousine transport into Civic. I encourage anybody who wants some detail on that to contact either the Canberra airport or Deane’s Buslines who will be very, very pleased to answer or, alternatively, read the Canberra Times of a few days ago when we had a bit of a spiel out there.
The other thing is that, for people working in the Brindabella business park, the Canberra airport subsidises their bus travel on the same buses from the Brindabella business park into Civic, so that they pay no more than if it were on an ACTION bus. Let us say it is $2.50, for the purpose of the argument. Then the airport is subsidising the remaining part of the $7.00. So it is not true to say that there is not a bus service from the airport to Civic.
Furthermore, we have introduced demand-responsive transport so that it is possible for people to run a bus service from the airport to Parliament House, provided two things occur. One is that they are an accredited bus service under that particular DRT and that they have permission at both ends of the journey to stop and pick up passengers. So it is up to the airport whether they can or cannot do it. There is a fight going on at the
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .