Page 1761 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 15 May 2019
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I have recently received correspondence from constituents in Kambah whose 10-year-old daughter can no longer catch a direct bus home from Sacred Heart primary in Pearce. She is now forced to have to make a lengthy and daunting transfer at Woden interchange.
I am not sure what is entertaining the minister, but I would not mind if she would listen to this. Her previous school bus, the 629, went via Garran primary, Marist, Melrose, Sacred Heart and Torrens primary. The so-called replacement route, the 2035 and the 2036, now skips Sacred Heart. My constituent told me, and I quote:
I feel that it is unsafe to expect my daughter to navigate a busy interchange. Therefore, our family faces either increased childcare costs or after-school care or loss of income incurred by reducing hours at work to allow for previously unneeded school pick-ups. The bus route we need exists; it just does not stop at the school any longer.
I urge the minister to consider the impacts of these cuts and, in particular, this change, and investigate if this new school route could be amended to include the students of Sacred Heart primary at Pearce.
MISS C BURCH (Kurrajong) (5.33): The Canberra Liberals will not be supporting the minister’s amendments today. By opposing my motion today the minister has demonstrated that she does not, in fact, have confidence in the quality of her network and in the safety of children under this network. If children were so safe and if Canberra were so safe, then the minister would have no issue in releasing analysis to prove this to be the case.
As if this were not evidence enough to demonstrate the minister’s complete negligence when it comes to student safety, I would also like to quickly draw the chamber’s attention to Transport Canberra’s walk safely to school initiative taking place this Friday. I visited this website recently expecting to find some advice for students and children on road safety and stranger danger, but was incredibly surprised to discover the only advice relating to safety recommends that drivers obey traffic signs and that the best way to keep children safe is to reduce the number of cars around our schools, which the minister has not managed to achieve in this case.
I then opened up the “What do I do if” form thinking that this had to be the place where they included road safety and stranger danger, but was even more surprised to see that this simply told students what to do if they got a flat tyre.
It is absolutely absurd that the minister is again accusing me of fabricating these concerns and that Ms Le Couteur has echoed that sentiment today. These are not my concerns; these are the concerns of hundreds upon hundreds of parents that we have heard from and continue to hear from every day—parents who cannot believe that this minister continues to ignore them and refuses to acknowledge their concerns.
We are not saying that parents are negligent for letting their children catch public buses. We have never said that. Parents are free to make that choice and the Canberra
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