Page 2138 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 May 2009
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So there you go. The government’s strategy for parking is to slug Canberrans more and more for fewer parking spots, to conduct a survey to tell us that we do not have enough parking spots and to hire more parking inspectors to fine those who have no doubt tried to park lawfully but cannot because of the shambles that parking is in in the city.
We have heard before the rhetoric from the Minister for Transport about the need to get off our driving habit and onto a bus. But that is getting more expensive too. From 1 July we will see an 11 per cent increase in bus fares. What will ACTION commuters get for that? The performance indicators in budget paper 4 reveal that they will get a worse service. The government has given up on running on time for ACTION. This year’s budget papers reveal that over the last year 83 per cent of ACTION services have run on time. This is well short of the 99.8 per cent target. Instead of announcing changes to get services back on time, the target has been adjusted to 83 per cent. That means that, in the same year that ACTION will get an extra 11 per cent for fares, one out of five buses will run late. If next year only 70 per cent of ACTION services are on time, can we assume that the next budget target will drop to 70 per cent?
It is a bizarre transport strategy that attempts to get people out of their cars by charging more for parking and then charges higher fares for buses and a network that does not even meet the everyday transport needs of Canberrans. The NRMA has observed that motorists are simply seen as an easy target for revenue from the government.
The housing budget is another Labor Party cover-up. In an unashamed cost shifting of $102 million of the federal government’s stimulus package, it is masking the underperformance of this government. As I raised in the media over the weekend, there is no mention of the $1 billion commitment to provide funding for some 1,500 extra homes in the territory. When the Labor Party and the Greens signed their parliamentary agreement, either they were deceitful in knowing how much it would cost and not telling anyone or they did not know how much it would cost and decided looking good was more important than being good. Either way, the agreement is a shambles and is not worth the paper it is written on.
The budget clearly lacks a direction on the involvement of community housing organisations in the provision of social housing in the territory. Community housing should be the future of social housing in the territory. Unlike the creaking public housing bureaucracy, community housing can provide housing that meets the diverse needs of individuals and families in a much quicker and more sensitive way. These organisations are better able to tailor housing solutions to meet specific needs and are able to do it at a much lower price.
The heritage budget is small, but very important. In the lead-up to our centenary year, 2013, it is more important than ever that we are able to tell the story of Canberra from our pioneering beginning through to our city present. Our heritage must be remembered in our rural villages, our suburbs and our institutions.
The new Bimberi Youth Justice Centre is a key project delivered in this reporting period. In spite of the fact that the facility was operational for fewer days than planned,
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