Page 3881 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 4 December 2007
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There have been too many incidents of violence—too many for this minister to continue using these excuses. The minister went on to say that the constraints of the Financial Management Act were yet another excuse, another reason, why the CCTV program was somewhat slow in being rolled out in the interchanges.
The advice to me from experienced urban services hands is that the existing departmental budget would have easily supported at least the introduction of three or four CCTV cameras into each of the Woden and Belconnen interchanges—the two most pressed bus interchanges—to immediately improve safety there. This has not occurred, because the idea or notion of urgency simply does not exist for this government.
While we are talking about the appropriation suddenly becoming the panacea to resolve the security issues at the bus interchanges, let me remind this house what the minister said in May when we were debating and discussing the deep concerns that we all shared—and, in fairness to the government, the government acknowledged those concerns—about the insecurity of our bus interchanges. What did the minister say then? I have said this a number of times, and I will keep on saying it.
I will remind the members of this house and the public that early this year and then again in May the minister acknowledged that there was a problem with our bus interchanges and said that he was going to do something about it as soon as possible. The minister said that he would be looking at both the CCTV strategies and the staffing strategies to improve security at our bus interchanges. He said that he would move as quickly as possible and that he acknowledged the need for urgency.
We now know that that has gone right out of the window. We are all sitting back, relaxed and happy, because the appropriation has been announced and in the fullness of time the program will be rolled out: there will be CCTV cameras at some stage. Apparently it is no longer the concern of the minister for services to ensure that those cameras are put in those interchanges quickly, because it is now a police matter and it is the police minister’s concern to roll out the CCTV program township-wide.
That is simply not good enough. The government knew early this year that there were significant problems. I know that because members of its own staff were being bashed in those interchanges. I also know that because there was a lot of feedback from people that assaults were occurring. I also know that because the police have reported something like 53 assault incidents in bus interchanges and on buses, I think in the six-month period to June this year, but if not six months then certainly in the 12-month period to June this year.
That is a pretty serious indicator. Yet again we see no sense of urgency by the government to move on this. If the government are fair dinkum about wanting to increase patronage on our public transport system and know that they must have to do something, why can the minister not find a few hundred thousand dollars to at least start the ball rolling with the two most badly impacted bus interchanges? He does not seem to be able to; you have to wonder where the sense of urgency is.
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