Page 396 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 21 March 2023
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Transport—ANU bus services—petition 2-23
Belconnen—Margaret Timpson Park—petition 28-22
MS CLAY (Ginninderra) (10.13): I am really pleased to sponsor the petition from ANUSA representative Skye to restore a bus route to the ANU campus. Skye did a really good job on this issue. It is obviously one that resonates with a lot of people; 1,237 people signed this petition, which is pretty significant in terms of parliamentary petitions. I have heard from people all over the community that the bus network needs improvement. I have real concerns about the pace of development of new bus infrastructure like our depots, our lanes and more. This is particularly concerning when we are talking about services for our campus. We obviously do not want to be encouraging or requiring a lot of our students to be driving. They cannot afford cars; they do not necessarily want cars. They need really, really good bus services.
Many thousands of students live on campus. They need to be able to access frequent, reliable public transport that connects them with the shops, services and the jobs most of these students are working their way through. We have frequent services on Barry Drive, but that is not a short walk for many of the students. It is as far as a one-kilometre walk away from the residential halls and that puts it outside of the typical reasonable distance a lot of us are happy to walk for public transport.
Skye has spoken a lot in this petition and in the media about safety concerns on campus. I think this is an ongoing and real issue. It affects a lot of people in different ways. Women are always concerned about safety. People in our LGBTQIA+ communities are concerned about safety. People of colour, people from different ethnic backgrounds, people with a disability—a lot of people who are on the campus have particular reasons to be worried about safety, and they really, really need a short, simple safe route to get to their bus stop.
I understand the bus service was cut in 2019 and there was a justification given at the time that there was low patronage. We would not necessarily have to ration our bus services in that way if we had more of them. If we kept the same ratio of buses to residents in 2022 that we had in 1990, we would have more buses. We would not have to cut a service just because not many people are using it. Those people who are using it need it. We need to keep that bus for those people.
I understand we have a lot of questions about the government plans. I am hearing a lot in the community at the moment about bus depots and bus services. We are looking forward to getting more clarity on that. I am really hoping that we might get a good response to Skye’s petition, to the 1,237 people and the several thousand students on campus who would like this bus service restored.
I also want to check in about another petition I have tabled. This was a petition by Peter Humphries, talking about Belconnen CBD. The petitioners have put in a few suggestions for what they would like to see in Margaret Timpson Park and there are some really great ideas here. I think the bigger issue is that that CBD has had a really high pace of development and we just have not kept pace by providing a school, a playground and green spaces. We have a beautiful area near the lake down there, but we have 10,000 people living in the CBD now and a lot of people with kids.
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