Page 1728 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 21 August 2007
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MR HARGREAVES: I will get the dates if people want them. I had a meeting with Mr Bramston, Mr Tam and Mr Wassell and we talked about two issues. The first issue related to wheelchair accessible taxis and the second issue related to how to go forward on general taxis. Mr Pratt is giggling away but he falsely accused me of not meeting with the industry. In fact, I put out a press release indicating the times and the dates of that meeting.
The contingency plan is that the government will make sure that nothing in the legislation or the regulations gets in the way of a healthy taxi industry. I will not go around baling people out if they go down.
Mr Pratt: Nobody is asking you to.
MR HARGREAVES: There are plenty of opportunities out there. But again, it is not up to us to do anything other than regulate this industry. Let me respond to Mr Smyth’s question about a contingency plan. I have had discussions in my office with Mr Tam, Mr Bramston and Mr Wassell in my office.
Mr Pratt interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Pratt!
MR HARGREAVES: Mr Pratt is interjecting possibly because he was not invited to the meeting.
Mr Barr: He should quit and run a taxi company.
MR HARGREAVES: Go and run a taxi company!
Minister for Territory and Municipal Services
MRS BURKE: My question is to the Minister for Territory and Municipal Services. His career as a minister has been a litany of failure and poor decisions. For example, he has had responsibility for the inordinate delay of Tharwa bridge, cycle lanes, GDE, poor maintenance of roads, poor maintenance of infrastructure such as drains, bus and bus interchange security, the FireLink fiasco, cuts to bus services, the closure of the Griffith library, the closure of the Civic shopfront, his appalling performance at estimates, the end of MACMA, slow progress in housing developments, a lack of consultation with the community and the decline in affordable housing. Minister, why does everything you touch turn into a management disaster?
MR HARGREAVES: It is very difficult to know how to answer that question. The reason I am having difficult is that I was waiting to find out that I was responsible for the drought, for the stock market going down and perhaps there will be a tsunami next week for which I am responsible. I reject all of those assertions of Mrs Burke.
One that comes to mind is slow progress in housing. We have completely revitalised the whole of the social housing system in the ACT. We have put millions of dollars into the sector. We have cut the waiting times down now to embarrassingly low
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