Page 3569 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 20 November 2007
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relationship we have with the travelling public and he does not acknowledge the extent to which CCTV cameras across the city are being renewed and installed as we speak. He does not acknowledge the number of CCTV cameras which are already on buses and the fact that the whole fleet will be done by this year. He does not recognise that at all.
Further, Mr Pratt says that we have only recently had some commitment to this. I have to tell you, Mr Speaker, he does not recognise that it was my colleague Mr Corbell who brought forward the sustainable transport plan. That sustainable transport plan talks about our attempts to get people out of cars, which is something Mr Pratt referred to. What about cycle paths, which is an infrastructure item? Did we hear any reference to that from Mr Pratt? Not a bit. Did we hear about the provision of driver training for motor cyclists? Not a thing.
Mr Pratt: The driver training program is not infrastructure.
MR HARGREAVES: Did we hear about road infrastructure and the amount of money we are putting into road infrastructure? No, we did not hear a thing about that in his speech. We hear it now in an interjection, now that he has had a wake-up call, but we did not hear a thing about it in his speech. Did we hear anything about taxi reforms? Not a thing. Did we hear anything about hire car reform? Not a thing. Did we hear anything about the ACT road safety strategy? Not a thing.
Mr Pratt says our $75 million allocation puts us back to where we were before. I hate to tell Mr Pratt this, but $50 million worth of additional buses, replacement buses, was not there four years ago. Did he recognise the fact that we are buying a further 16 this year? No, he did not. Did he acknowledge that 55 per cent of our fleet will be wheelchair accessible by the year 2012? No, he did not. Did he recognise that we are putting CNG and environmentally-friendly diesel in our buses? No, he did not. In fact, he wasted his 15 minutes almost completely, because all he really talked about were two items. He talked about reports of violence at interchanges and he then tabled a bunch of his own media releases. Why he tabled them I do not know, because we can get them all off the net.
He then talked about old fleet replacements. But he asked me a question in annual report and estimates hearings about our fleet replacement program in the last couple of years. Does he recall that we have injected an enormous amount of money into replacement engines to extend the life of the buses from 12 years to 20 years? It costs an enormous amount of money to put a bus engine in. Of course, we can extend the life of the buses. Yet he contradicts himself by saying, “But the amount of buses will increase by 10 per cent.” Did he talk about what that 10 per cent figure might represent? It represents 40 buses. That is an incredible amount of money. He screams his lungs out from time to time, saying, “You’ve got to put more buses on the road.”
Mr Pratt: On the back of four years of neglect it is pretty meaningless, John.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Pratt, order!
MR HARGREAVES: Mr Pratt, in this matter of public importance I think it is reasonable that we compare what the government is doing. There has been an
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