Page 1071 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 30 March 2011
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no evidence to guarantees that these promises will be delivered to the people most affected by the inadequacies of the present WAT regime under the leadership of what is in essence an ACT Labor-Greens alliance.
The disability portfolio is an important portfolio and one which directly affects the lives of many Canberrans. As such, it is one that should not be treated as a political football to be kicked about for political gain. More hard work must be done to address the needs of the most vulnerable members of our community. Given the reasons already outlined, unfortunately this Greens motion is not it.
We will monitor the Stanhope government’s initiatives for their proposed centralised booking system in the months to come and hold them accountable to their promises of a more responsive, equitable, sustainable and user-friendly WAT system. Therefore, we will not be supporting this motion today.
MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (3.04), in reply: I will close. I have to say I am quite disappointed, particularly with Mr Doszpot, his speech and what he has said in that speech. Quite clearly, as I have outlined in this motion, the proposal which has come forward and which is part of this motion has actually come forward from the disability sector. It has come forward from the WAT Consortium. It has come forward from groups like Advocacy for Inclusion. It has come forward from people who used to be on the Disability Advisory Group. It has come forward from people who are actually in the disability sector, who use WATs and who are experiencing great frustration day after day at not being able to use WAT services. The frustration, as my motion indicates in the noting, is that there have been a number of reports that have come out and each time the report has come out with the same solution, despite the fact that that solution had been tried before and had not worked.
This was an opportunity to actually do something different. We have got the PricewaterhouseCoopers report in which they have said, “We are not going to go with the WAT advocacy, what the WAT Consortium has put forward. We are not even going to go with what the CTIA has put forward, the Canberra Taxi Industry Association.” What they have put forward is more than what the government has come up with. They have not even gone with that. They have basically said, “We will try the centralised booking service. It has failed before. That is okay. We will try it again. And then in 18 months time we might look to do something different.” Again, we are going to go through a process where we have spent quite a lot of money, we have gone through a report, we have spent quite a lot of money to implement something that may not work, that has actually failed before, but then we will try to do something different. The disability sector is experiencing great frustration at what has come out in that report.
Yes, as Mr Stanhope said, the government undertook a review. But people with a disability were hoping for a much better outcome and were very disappointed. I think we saw that in the media from groups like Advocacy for Inclusion. Instead, they got more of the same, a recommendation that has already been trialled and failed. The government has indeed tried reform. But, as the Chief Minister himself noted, it has not led to improved services.
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