Page 2740 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 June 2011
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issues, they are not going to deliver it and the Greens are not going to flex their muscles.
Every now and then the Greens might put out a press release; every now and again one of them might make a statement in here asking, “When are we going to get the Gungahlin shopfront? When is it going to happen?” If the Greens were actually fair dinkum about their agreement, if they were worth their salt, they would say, “You have to do this, otherwise we will review our agreement”. Instead, it is not going to be delivered before 2012. There is no way in the world the Gungahlin shopfront is going to be there for October 2012. I will be very surprised if that happens, and yet look at all the money that has been spent on it already. A $100,000 contract was entered into of which $59,000 was spent, according to page 165 of the committee’s report, and we are still not going to get it. We are still not going to see anything because they have now re-scoped the project, in effect, and will look at putting 500 public servants out into Gungahlin. If they do that, they might consider putting a government shopfront at the bottom of that office building.
There are way too many ifs and mights and buts there. When it comes down to it, the 45,000 people who live out in Gungahlin would like a shopfront and would like to have access to government services. It is as simple as that. Why does this government not want to make itself available to the people of Gungahlin through a government shopfront? Why do they not want to see greater uptake of their services through the provision of a shopfront in Gungahlin? It absolutely amazes me that here you have a government that is so unwilling to make available its services to such an important region of our city, an area of the city which has so many infrastructure needs and so many young families. It is staggering that they would drag the chain on such an important issue.
One of the other extremely important issues within TAMS which I will speak to now is that of ACTION buses. It seems to me that this government, whether it be under the previous ministers—Mr Hargreaves and Mr Stanhope—or Mr Corbell, is totally incapable of delivering the reforms that everybody seems to know need to be made. I find it very hard to believe that ACTION management are not giving the minister of the day ideas about how to reform the service. I have a lot of time and a lot of respect for many people within the ACTION organisation. I think they do a great job, and I am quite confident that they would be providing advice to the minister about things that they could do to make it run better. However, successive ministers have been absolutely unwilling to step up and make the courageous, tough decisions which need to be made about ACTION rather than simply continuing the status quo. It is simply not sustainable.
The ACTION operating statement found on page 113 of the 2011-2012 budget shows that the estimated outcome for the 2010-11 year for ACT government user charges is $74.6 million and the non-ACT government user charges—that is, in effect, the fare box and charter services—is about $22.2 million. So there you have a government subsidy to the tune of around $75 million. That is absolutely amazing. That is a subsidy per voting Canberran to the tune of approximately $300 per year. If you were to reform that and save 10 per cent of that, suddenly you would have $7 million a year. I wonder what $7 million a year would do for Cranleigh in my electorate. I wonder what $7 million would do for the Shepherd Centre. I wonder what $7 million would
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