Page 3381 - Week 09 - Thursday, 22 August 2019
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in this place she mentioned 28 times alone that network 19 was aiming to be more efficient. So it is not us who are going on about efficiencies in the public transport network; it is the Labor-Greens government.
On Tuesday we spoke in this place at length about the latest cuts that this minister has made to the weekend bus network. Again it is the Labor-Greens government that continue to cut bus services. School buses: we know that they have cut dozens of school bus services, with 50 schools having no dedicated school bus services. And they continue to ignore the safety concerns being raised by parents and schools. They have cut over 750 bus stops, the vast majority of them on the south side of Canberra.
As we know that those opposite follow Mr Parton’s social media so closely, I am sure that they have seen the video of the hundreds and hundreds of bus stops that have been decommissioned on the south side of Canberra. It is this Labor-Greens government that have privatised light rail operations, not a Liberal government. Mr Gentleman, I think the South Australian Liberals are actually taking notes out of your playbook, not ours.
“Better connected,” they claim, “more buses, more often.” Minister Steel seems to think that if he says it often enough, it might start to become true, but that is not how the real world works. When will Minister Steel wake up and realise that public transport is about more than just a 12-kilometre stretch of Canberra, an $800 million stretch that has come at the cost of critical services for our outer services and outer suburban residents?
This government continue to claim to be building an inclusive city, but you have to ask: inclusive for who? It is certainly not inclusive for residents of Tuggeranong and residents of west Belconnen. They claim to be the workers party: for which workers? Certainly not for workers who are trying to get around our city on the bus network or workers who depend on public transport on weekends.
They claim to be supporting minorities: which minorities? It is certainly not disabled people or people with mobility impairment. They claim to be the party of unions, but we have seen that they are no longer even listening to the Transport Workers Union and their concerns about this bus network.
To address Ms Cheyne’s allegations that we on this side of the chamber do not catch buses, the truth is that we do not feel the need to virtue-signal or post on Facebook or Twitter every time that we do.
Finally, I would like to address Minister Steel’s constant use of the word “tweak”. The Cambridge Dictionary definition of “tweak” is “small changes”. If you say that you have made more than 100 tweaks to the network, at what point will you admit to Canberrans that these are not just tweaks, that these are substantial changes, because network 19 is such a complete disaster for Canberrans?
MR GENTLEMAN (Brindabella—Manager of Government Business, Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Minister for Planning and Land Management, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister assisting the Chief Minister on
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