Page 3571 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 20 November 2007
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we were to go down to the Civic interchange now, we would see marauding hordes terrorising all of the poor old bus travellers down there and perpetrating violence on them constantly! Mr Pratt builds up a straw man so that he can tear it down. Well, it does not work. This is just a rampant attempt to hide one’s own inefficiency and one’s own lack of work.
The alternative transport policy is evidence that not one minute of thought has gone into providing a substantial alternative transport policy. There is nothing here which recommends itself to the people of the ACT about how they would do anything and how they would fund it. Mr Pratt criticises $75 million worth of additional investment in infrastructure, yet what does he offer in return? Absolutely nothing, as usual. (Time expired.)
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (3.58): We have had a bit of a duel of the standing members. Public transport is, of course, a matter of utmost public importance. It is a good time for Ms MacDonald to bring this issue to the Assembly’s attention. I do not think it would have been brought up as a matter of public importance, say, even a month ago. But there is no doubt that the appropriation bill that is before us contains good news for public transport, and that will always be welcomed and applauded by the Greens.
If Canberra is ever going to reduce its ecological footprint, public transport will have to become much more available and better utilised. We know that transport fuels make up approximately a quarter of our emissions at the moment and that, if we are going to achieve the required reduction in emissions to mitigate climate change, increased use of public transport will be a central part of those reductions.
There are people who say that we should just work on developing cars that rely less on oil and create less emissions, and that will be part of the mix as well, but we know that, with increasing population, congestion issues and other health-related issues will come to the forefront if we just focus on making cars more environmentally friendly. We know that public transport is also vitally important to social justice, because a number of our population do not have cars. I mentioned a few weeks ago that in west Belconnen there is quite a large percentage of people without cars. I think the figure is something like nine to 10 per cent. That is an indicator not just of poverty but of people below the age of 18, families that only have one car and people being left at home during the day—often people with children, usually women—and that they need access to a good, reliable bus transport system. People may also remember that I mentioned one person who reported taking three hours to get from west Belconnen to the doctor, and this is just not acceptable.
We are all aware that the 2006-07 budget not only slashed funds for public transport but also changed the governance system. Responsibility for it was taken away from planning where, through happenstance, it was integrated through having the same minister. Also, putting the ACTION bus authority within the Department of Territory and Municipal Services removed its identity and made it battle, in an interdepartmental way, for funds. Without any evaluation—and I hope the government has done some internal evaluation—we cannot know the impact that that had on our bus system.
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