Page 84 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 9 February 2016
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this government to deliver on the promises and commitments it made in the last election. This is probably going to be their next election promise for this coming election as to just what will be delivered in this wi-fi area.
Just to make my point clear to all those on the other side of the chamber, if we take a closer look at what is happening here, here in the Assembly itself, for example, we have no wi-fi access in this building other than in this chamber. And if we are looking at how a government is reacting to its rhetoric, we do not have the wi-fi in this building for our offices to communicate with our community. We can communicate by wi-fi here in the chamber but what about the rest of the building? Is this the modern Canberra where we talk about the wonderful digital commitment of this government?
Mr Gentleman: I have got wi-fi upstairs.
MR DOSZPOT: You may have it on your floor—through you, Madam Speaker—we do not have wi-fi access on the first floor. Once again we seem to come back to the election commitments of this Labor government. In 2012 they committed $2.9 million over four years to establish free wi-fi in bus interchanges and in ACTION buses. It was only in December of last year that five ACTION buses were fitted with free public wi-fi as part of a 12-month trial. When can Canberrans expect free wi-fi to be rolled out to the rest of the ACTION bus fleet as promised at the 2012 election and as was run by a private bus network in Queanbeyan over four years ago? Perhaps we will see this again as a re-announced election commitment for 2016.
The track record of this government does not tell the story of a government that values the importance of delivering high quality internet services to all Canberrans. It tells the story of a government that makes promise after promise and fails to deliver for the people of Canberra. It is a government that is hiding behind the achievements of the federal government and yet criticises the federal government and is not delivering on its own ACT election commitment to the people of Canberra. We on this side of the chamber believe that investing in the digital economy is very, very important here in the territory and it is the way of the future and is fundamentally important to the future growth and development of our national capital.
So we urge the Chief Minister to not just wax lyrical about how committed he is to it. Let us see the whole commitment by delivery to our community, to the children in Canberra that Ms Porter spoke about. Let us give everyone an opportunity to use wi-fi the way that commitment was made four years ago. But I do thank Ms Porter for raising this matter of public importance but, as often happens with what the government considers to be of public importance, such as the digital world that we are supposed to be well on top of here in Canberra, we have a long way to travel before that reality is here for us in the ACT.
DR BOURKE (Ginninderra—Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Minister for Children and Young People, Minister for Disability, Minister for Small Business and the Arts and Minister for Veterans and Seniors) (4.19): Just last Saturday a constituent spoke to me at my Kippax centre mobile office about the lack of a usable internet service to support his home IT business in west Belconnen. When I was doorknocking in Latham on Sunday morning, a man said he had been waiting
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