Page 2993 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 15 August 2018
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not our suggestion that children’s safety is at risk here. We are representing the concerns of the hundreds of parents who have said that they will not put their children on the public network.
If we, the Canberra Liberals, are scaremongering and making out that there is some safety issue here that does not exist, then why have we seen so many schools speak out publicly about their concerns? MacKillop College, Radford College, St Clare’s College, St Edmund’s College, Brindabella Christian College, Good Shepherd primary, Marist College, Daramalan College, Canberra Girls Grammar, the ACT Catholic Education Office and the ACT Association of Independent Schools have all spoken out publicly in the media about their safety concerns for children. Are they scaremongering too? And that is only those that have been willing to speak out publicly. As Mrs Kikkert alluded to, we have also heard that many public school principals are not willing to speak out publicly.
The minister has said that she wants facts. According to the government’s own report from 2016, 31 per cent of people do not feel safe at bus stops. Forty per cent of people do not feel safe at interchanges. These are regular commuters and not specifically schoolchildren. Yet the minister is claiming that we are creating this safety issue. In addition, in the 2016 report 75 per cent of people said that they do not like changing buses. Yet the proposed new network includes many more transfers for many people.
The minister has said that she wants to hear facts, and the facts around consultation remain. The consultation website and all the language that has been used at forums say that Transport Canberra want to know how they can best support Canberrans in using the new network: “how we can assist you to use the network”. It is not hard to see why residents feel that this is a done deal and that they are not being listened to.
The minister has also failed to address the third-round consultation around timetables, which was mentioned by her deputy director during estimates. Her media release this afternoon is also silent on this. Could it be that following the significant public outcry the government has now decided to walk away from this third-round consultation?
To respond to Ms Cheyne’s comments as well, many of my colleagues and I have been at these community meetings and they have been drastically different to the meeting that Ms Cheyne described. Many, many Canberrans have come to us saying that they have had responses from officials that have not addressed their concerns or they have been told to wait until the end of the meeting.
As my colleagues have mentioned, we have not heard from a single school, a single parent group or a single individual parent who supports the government’s cuts to school buses. We have not heard from a single disability group, retirement community or seniors group who is supportive of the cuts to suburban services and the removal of their local bus stops. We have not heard from a single community council or residents association that supports the changes in their local areas. And I note that those opposite have not mentioned a single specific example of positive feedback that they have received. In fact, I would be incredibly surprised if, out of the almost 8,000 responses to government consultation, there has been a single response that is supportive of these network changes.
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