Page 4680 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 27 November 2019
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the cancellation of school buses. The fact is that children and their parents are very uncomfortable about those changes.
Poor access to public transport is isolating for women. It can prevent or limit their social and economic participation in their community. This is reflected in the data in my electorate of Brindabella, for example, which shows that fewer people are using the public bus network in Tuggeranong. This represents an overwhelming disregard for the safety of women.
I would also like to touch on older Canberrans and seniors, to whom exactly the same concerns can apply. They may already feel more isolated. They may already feel that they are more vulnerable because they may be starting to have some physical infirmities or are becoming slightly more frail, but they certainly have a perception that they are more at risk—their personal safety is more at risk. We are not just talking about women; we are also talking about older Canberrans generally, of whom there are quite a large number. We are talking about schoolchildren, their parents and families. It could apply to some culturally and linguistically diverse groups, who may feel at risk if they are walking further to bus stops in the dark and waiting longer for bus services. We have seen some terrible racially motivated attacks, and we do not want to be putting anyone in this position, no matter which demographic they come from, in our city of Canberra.
I repeat my point: why weren’t these basic safety needs considered before the new bus network was rolled out? How will the ACT government achieve their target of making women feel safer when they are taking away some of the very public services that helped women to feel safe? Helping women to feel safe in public places, especially at night, and when using public transport, is an important part of what we should be doing to help women, older people and any other group that feels unsafe. We should be working to make them feel safer.
Apart from the physical safety concerns for older Canberrans, for example, there is the very real concern for many older Canberrans that they simply cannot walk further to another bus stop. Now that their nearest bus stop has been closed—750 of them closed—they simply cannot walk further, even if it is not a lot further. I have heard, for example, from residents of Wanniassa who are very upset because Wanniassa—there are many examples but this is one example—has quite a number of hills. For some residents the bus stop may be almost the same distance away but it means they have to walk up the hill either on their way there or on their way home, and physically they do not feel able to do that.
We have heard from so many residents in Tuggeranong about how upset, how isolated and how disadvantaged they feel, yet the government remains unmoved. I genuinely thought that when the new Minister for Transport came in he might make some changes. It is a good time to put your stamp on a portfolio, and the bus network came out under the previous Minister for Transport. I genuinely believed that the minister might take all of that feedback from Tuggeranong residents to heart—that feedback from Tuggeranong residents that is evidenced and backed up by having fewer users of public transport, according to the government’s own data, in Tuggeranong. They have remained unmoved. They have not made the changes that residents of Tuggeranong
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