Page 2447 - Week 06 - Thursday, 24 June 2010
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although probably not with the results this morning at about 6 o’clock. It is pleasing to see that the independent audit of the audit office has been funded in that regard.
It does bring into question the need to spend so much money in the last week of the year and whether or not the government is managing, whether the ministers are managing, whether the departments are actually managing the funds that are appropriated to them and whether or not there is the need for this last-minute binge spending that the government is so keen on.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Paper
Mr Corbell presented the following paper:
ACT Criminal Justice—Statistical Profile 2010—March quarter.
ACTION bus service—network
Discussion of matter of public importance
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Mr Hargreaves): Mr Speaker has received letters from Ms Bresnan, Mr Coe, Mr Doszpot, Mrs Dunne, Mr Hanson, Mr Hargreaves, Ms Hunter, Ms Le Couteur, Ms Porter, Mr Seselja and Mr Smyth proposing that matters of public importance be submitted to the Assembly. In accordance with standing order 79, Mr Speaker has determined that the matter proposed by Mrs Dunne be submitted to the Assembly, namely:
The ACTION bus network.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (3.32): The ACT Labor government led by the Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope, has utterly failed the people of Canberra in the delivery of bus services in this city. What we have here is a government, and more particularly a Chief Minister, that is more interested in arboreta and public artworks than in delivering the kinds of services that the people of the ACT have a right to, that they need and that they should expect.
The result is that some of the core services on which this ACT government should be focusing its attention fall into the depths of inefficiency and disrepair at great cost to the Canberra taxpayer. Perhaps the costs of these inefficiencies, were they to be saved, might be more readily available for more spending on some of the more ideological personal memorial projects that this Chief Minister seems so intent upon spending our money. But perhaps more importantly those savings might be more readily available for better delivery of other services such as shorter elective waiting lists, keeping schools open, delivering infrastructure projects on time and on budget or, in accordance with the topic of today’s MPI, delivering a more efficient and effective bus service for the people of the ACT.
Instead of addressing his attention to some of those personal memorials, this Chief Minister should be addressing the efficiency of the ACTION bus network. By the government’s own figures, the cost of this government’s mismanagement of the
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