Page 3957 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 5 December 2007
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our bus infrastructure are safe. We have committed quite heavily to ensuring the safety of all ACTION buses. We have committed to the installation of a CCTV camera on every single ACTION bus in the fleet—a fleet which, when we inherited it from the opposition, did not contain a single CCTV camera.
In relation to CCTV cameras and safety, we have gone from a position of no CCTV cameras at all—nil, none—under the Liberal government to a position where, by the end of this coming year, every single ACTION bus will contain one—every single one. We have gone from a position of nil per cent under Mr Hargreaves to a position of 100 per cent. We have gone from none to 100 per cent.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Chief Minister, resume your seat.
Mrs Burke: Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order. Under 118 (b) Mr Stanhope needs to confine himself to the subject matter, and that was about not buses but bus interchanges. That was the specific question.
MR STANHOPE: No, it was about safety.
Mrs Burke: On bus interchanges, not buses.
MR SPEAKER: It was about the Chief Minister’s confidence in his minister.
Mrs Burke: And security of bus interchanges, not buses.
MR STANHOPE: It was about security on public transport. The facts are—and they are simple facts and they are quite bald facts—that, under the Liberal Party, there was absolutely no regard for safety on buses or within interchanges. We went from a situation where not a single bus in the ACT was equipped with basic safety equipment, including or involving a CCTV camera.
Mr Pratt: Nor was there the same rate of assaults on bus staff.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Pratt!
MR STANHOPE: Under Mr Hargreaves’s leadership and advocacy, we have gone to a situation where, by the end of this coming year, every single bus in the ACTION bus fleet will contain a CCTV camera. We have gone from a situation under the stewardship of the Liberal Party—the legacy of Bill Stefaniak and Brendan Smyth in government—with no cameras, no safety initiatives, no safety measures, no regard for safety.
This is another example of the ACT Labor Party in government picking up and repairing years of neglect. What more stark example is there in relation to public transport and safety than the fact that under the Liberals not one bus in the ACT had a camera—not one. Under John Hargreaves and the Labor Party, every single bus is protected through a CCTV camera. The moneys are appropriated; the contracts are let. As I have said, by the end of next year John Hargreaves will have delivered to the public transport travelling public of the ACT a level of safety which never occurred to the Liberal Party—or, if it did occur to the Liberal Party, and it probably did, they thought “why bother?” and did nothing.
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