Page 3142 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 20 August 2019
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The gymnastics that Ms Le Couteur has proven herself capable of this morning are quite extraordinary. Firstly, I go to her points on my motion being inaccurate. As a small lesson that perhaps Ms Le Couteur needs in reading comprehension, I refer to the paragraph:
… the repeated failures of the Minister for Transport and City Services to deliver more frequent and reliable weekend services, as promised under Network19 …
I spoke extensively in my first speech about the fact that the government did continuously promise Canberrans 70 per cent more weekend services. That is the point that my motion gets to.
Next I go to Ms Le Couteur’s point that we need to give a new minister more time to address these issues. We did that, Madam Speaker. We did exactly that last Wednesday, when we agreed to a month-long action plan in order for the minister to address these issues and look at other options, such as offering driver incentives and increasing driver recruitment, to address these issues. It is unfortunate that the minister has not taken on board the time that we have given him. He has, instead, 40 hours later, come out with the announcement that he is slashing and burning the weekend timetable.
As to the minister’s speech this morning, I note some changes in language. Last week they were making tweaks to the bus network; they were continuously making small tweaks to the bus network. Today they are making continuous adjustments to improve the network. Adjustments may be slightly larger than tweaks, but you still have to wonder at which point the minister will actually admit that there are huge failures in this network that still need to be addressed. I am also curious as to whether the 10 new bus drivers that were announced last week suddenly dropped to eight bus drivers two days later.
As for Minister Gentleman’s speech, the scaremongering that we have heard this morning about cuts and privatisation is really just laughable when we are literally here discussing cuts that this government has made to local services, cuts that this government has made to weekend bus services. In terms of the South Australian Liberals’ privatisation agenda, maybe they are just taking the lead from your government, Mr Gentleman, when it comes to privatising tram operations.
As for blaming a Liberal minister for decisions that were made 24 years ago, that is completely and utterly ridiculous. We are here today to discuss not the history of penalty rates but the broken promises of this government and this government’s inability, once again, to deliver basic local services.
This is why I have moved a further amendment to Ms Le Couteur’s motion. As I mentioned previously, and as Ms Le Couteur mentioned on Friday and again this morning, if she does truly think that the minister’s behaviour has been dismaying and disrespectful, she will support the censure motion. This is why a censure motion is so important.
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