Page 1760 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 15 May 2019
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The amendment also changes some other data details in the motion because we are not confident that useful data exists. For example, I am referring to data on safety for students. The deadline is also delayed by one month to get an extra month of data on network 19. I think this is probably pretty important over a short period as this can be skewed by things like wet weather, really windy days and the number of public holidays.
In conclusion, I do not agree with Miss Burch’s views about changes to school bus services and complaints being the main measure of success or failure of the bus network. However, I do think that getting detailed data on how network 19 is going is a very good idea for students and for adults in Canberra, in fact, for anyone who gets around in Canberra. Therefore, I will vote for the ALP amendment.
MRS JONES (Murrumbidgee) (5.29): I begin my contribution by thanking the minister for her patronising speech about stranger danger. I will read to her from the newsletter of one of the government schools from last year, before the changes to the bus network, where this principal said:
You may be aware that there have been a number of incidents across Canberra recently where strangers have approached school children, enticing them to their car or away from school grounds. In each case, the children have acted wisely by refusing and moving away from this man.
The idea of stranger danger is not something new. To suggest that our representing the views of parents who have come to us in this place makes us somehow irresponsible is utter nonsense, and the minister knows it.
The Labor-Greens government has made bus travel more difficult and more time consuming for school children. We now need to walk further, wait longer and transfer more often. Schoolchildren have been the hardest hit under these cuts—an absolutely ironic outcome.
As the Liberals have continually warned, schoolchildren are being stranded on the side of the road with their school buses now cut and the too few public routes being full. Schoolchildren have lost their direct school buses and are now left to catch public buses, making transfers at busy interchanges, a concept which really worries me as a mum of children across primary and middle-school ages.
When this change was first suggested I had my own personal panic because I have an 11-year-old who has ADHD. He thinks that every person he meets will be his best friend. The idea of him at a major bus interchange was very distressing to me personally because I know what would happen under those circumstances. He would make friends with all sorts of people.
At the end of the day, the danger that a child is in is up to the parents to determine. If parents have come to us and they believe that their children are in danger, the minister should not be mocking us but should be taking that matter very seriously.
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