Page 2792 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 23 June 2009
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son has been unable to because it is a dust bowl. But my older son used to and I used to sit at the same cafe. In fact, I met my wife at that cafe. We had our first breakfast there. So I have a great affection for that location also. I have recently had coffee with a number of the proprietors of the establishments there and share with them their concern about how the government has allowed that location to be degraded in the last number of years.
Turning to roads and the maintenance of roads, we have heard about the Gungahlin Drive extension and the failure there in fiscal terms—the $20 million that it is now going to cost us to duplicate a road that should have been duplicated in the first place. We have wasted $20 million. This is not just about money that is going to go on a budget bottom line; it is also about the inconvenience. Every morning when I drive, thankfully from Weston Creek, I hear about the appalling state of that road in the traffic report. I hear about people who are backed up for kilometres travelling on the GDE to get to work. This is just unnecessary. Had the government been able to plan it right in the first place they would have saved money and created a far better service for the community.
I turn to the issue of buses and the amount of money that we spend in this territory on our buses and the amount to which they are subsided. We certainly are not getting the service that we should be getting. I believe about eight per cent of people use them. People are voting with their seats or, should I say, their bottoms, because that is what you sit on in a bus. If the service was good and was providing what should be provided and if we were getting value for money then I do not think we would have such a lowly number in terms of percentage of use in the territory.
I notice that there are efficiencies that can be found. In the estimates report, which I have read—and I refer you to recommendation 79, minister—you will find that there are a number of efficiencies that can be made. I hope they can be so that we can provide a more efficient service. I share Mr Coe’s concern about the disproportionate increase in fares for students. People who are studying at university or CIT should rightly pay for their buses, but I think that the increase in fares is disproportionate and indeed unfair. No doubt Mr Coe will have more to say about that. I look forward to supporting him in those endeavours.
What we see here is a minister, a supposed mayor, who really I do not think has put the effort into this portfolio that it deserves. We can look to the efforts that Mr Coe has made in this area as the shadow minister. I encourage the Chief Minister to catch some of that enthusiasm—the enthusiasm of youth maybe that Mr Coe has for this portfolio and the splendid job he is doing—and take on board the recommendations in the estimates report.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (10.22): The provisions of services under the Territory and Municipal Services line in the budget are, in many ways, the bread and butter of what we are about in the ACT Assembly. One of the interesting things is that many people, when they get into politics in the ACT, are suddenly shocked and appalled to discover that what people in the ACT are most interested in in terms of this Assembly is the delivery of services. A lot of those services are about the quality of their roads and footpaths, their sportsgrounds and the like. Under the tutelage of the Stanhope government I think that we have seen a considerable decline in those areas.
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