Page 981 - Week 03 - Thursday, 10 March 2016
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Graffiti detracts from the amenity of our city. Removing graffiti is often complicated and it can be expensive. However, instead of assisting residents with removal, the government’s approach to graffiti is to employ a graffiti coordinator. It is all very well to appoint a graffiti coordinator, but that really does not do much for people who happen to live perhaps backing on to Baldwin Drive, Hindmarsh Drive or numerous roads across the ACT where graffiti is rife up and down those streets.
The neglect of Canberra’s roads is another disappointment to Canberrans. Every year the government sets targets for resurfacing and every single year it fails to meet those targets for municipal roads. Roads in the ACT are not being resurfaced as frequently as they should be, which means that potholes and further damage are more likely. When roads are resealed, the use of inferior chip seal often leads to damaged vehicles and simply does not do the job it is intended to on many occasions. Gravel is stirred up by vehicles and it makes a dangerous surface for pedestrians and cyclists. These chip seal surfaces are noisy and residents frequently raise concerns with the opposition about how unhappy they are with the increase in traffic noise brought about by this chip seal.
Further to that, chip seal resurfaced roads regularly have to be repaired. Usually they are able to do this under warranty when the job is botched. However, it just goes to show, when you have experts applying chip seal and they struggle to do so, how temperamental this surface is, how troublesome it is and how difficult it is to actually apply this surface correctly. There are certain circumstances where chip seal is a good choice, but there are many other circumstances, I believe, where chip seal is being used in the ACT where it simply should not be. The reason for that is because of this government’s budgetary pressures. Of course, the reason for these budgetary pressures is none other than light rail.
Buses in Canberra are playing second fiddle as this government concentrates all its attention on light rail. Throughout the term of this Assembly annual bus patronage has dropped. Each year under this Labor-Greens coalition government, as we heard Minister Corbell describe the arrangement yesterday, the patronage has dropped. Just imagine if this were a Liberal government and public transport patronage had fallen each year. Just imagine the uproar that would arise from those opposite. But this is a Labor government that not only cares about public transport for all of Canberra; it simply wants to replace probably the best bus in the network with a slower tram.
It seems to us, and I think it seems to many Canberrans, that the ACTION bus network is simply a poor cousin to the government’s obsession with light rail. Mr Rattenbury spoke yesterday about his pleasure of seeing a patronage increase on the 783 Xpresso service from Molonglo to the city. One of the greatest attributes of this service is that a direct service from Holder, Duffy, Wright and Coombs goes straight into the city every weekday morning. It is a direct suburb to the city service. You get on the bus, you sit down and the bus takes you to the city in a single-seat solution. That is what Canberrans want. That is exactly what Mr Rattenbury was saying yesterday with the 783 Xpresso.
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