Page 862 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 2 April 2008
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MR HARGREAVES: Thanks very much, Mr Speaker. I thank the opposition over there for wasting their own valuable educative time. We will be conveying information to the community—through you, Mr Speaker, to Mr Gentleman—because we have actually learned some lessons from the 2006 exercise. We know that we have been out there and consulted with the community extensively.
We did that through a number of ways, not the least of which was to listen to a standing committee of this place. The standing committee of this place said, “You have to communicate what the network is all about. What are the timetables? What are the bus routes? What are the things that you are doing and what are the things that you have to do?” We are going to do that. We are going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars doing just that.
Before you issue warnings, Mr Speaker, let me put a few numbers on the table. When we introduce the new network—you work out the timetables—the timetable production is $100,000. They are going to say, “You are producing it.” The print run is $30,000. We, of course, will have to do radio campaigns to tell people because the bus routes are so different. We have to go through this.
We are required, under the Disability Discrimination Act of the commonwealth, to advise people of the changes there will be—to interchanges, to bus stops and to bus routes. We are required to do it. We will have major route bus stop signage. We have $200,000 to spend on that. We also have bus stop blade signs, $60,000; interchange route and map signs, $10,000; interchange overhead signs, $20,000.
We are talking about passenger information brochures, $10,000. We are going to have touch screens at the computer kiosk—$20,000. We will have a push-button link to the call centre at the interchanges. That is going to be introduced. If you add all those things up and a raft of other things, you come to the $1.2 million, of which $10,000 was put on the logo refresher. This network is not a bandaid version of 2006. This is a completely new network.
What we have got over there is a bunch of people who will use whatever dirty tricks campaign they can to talk it down. What we are trying to do with the new network, with the logo, with the livery, with the interchange information, with the kiosk, with the push-button information is communicate with the community about what exactly it is that they are receiving for those millions of dollars that this government is putting into the new network.
We have the support of the Transport Workers Union who have to deliver the service. We have the support of the community for the extra routes. Talk to those people that go to the eye hospital and tell them they do not need the service. Talk to those people that have to go to the Brindabella Business Park and tell them that they do not need the service. We consulted with them and have further tweaked it and tweaked it. That has cost us extra millions of dollars as well, which this government has provided.
This is a brand new network. That is a very old and very tired opposition. They are in opposition for the rest of their political lives in this place. As my staff member said,
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