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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (17 June) . . Page.. 1661 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

in between cutting all the services and reducing the frequency of services, they managed to get the fares up by 50 per cent as well. No wonder commuters have been leaving the ACTION bus system in droves in frustration. It will take years to get those passengers back, Mr Kaine, because of your Government's mismanagement. We have to get them back for the sake of the public transport system and the planning of Canberra. The damage that has been done by your Government, Mr Kaine, will be felt for many years into the future.

Let us look at some of the proposals in the Graham report for a redesigned network. The first one is for high-frequency feeder and community-based services and routes that better reflect community needs and travel patterns. Was this not the Government that reduced the frequency of feeder services? Was this not the Government that said that that was a good thing? Now Graham is saying what we said all along - that if you reduce the frequency of the feeder routes you make it less attractive to catch the buses and people stop catching them. The report recommends reliable connecting services for passengers. These are the people who, in successive Bus Books, shaved the margins on the changeover of buses at interchanges in a way which made it much harder to rely on catching a connecter and much more likely that you would find that your connecter was not there and you would have an increased wait.

Mr Kaine referred to innovative routes which would, for example, service the airport and hotels. The Labor Party in government were the ones who produced the innovation of express buses going from outer suburbs directly to areas where people work. The Government have picked up the Labor Party's initiative in that area, but they have not developed it at all. Here is a new way that they could have been developing it, but they have not been interested in improving services. They have been interested only in that magic $12.7m saving that they promised at the last election. That was one of the few election promises that the Canberra community would have been grateful to the Government for not keeping, but it is one of the few they did keep.

Mr Kaine referred to improved night and weekend services to encourage people to use buses. What can I say? These are the people who reduced after-hours services. There are parts of town where if you do not get to the interchange by 6 o'clock you have an hour-and-a-half to wait to get from the interchange to your home. That encourages people to catch the bus, does it not? If you miss your bus and you have to catch the next one, you wait around at the interchange for an hour-and-a-half. Now they say, "We agree with Graham. We should improve night services". Damn right you should, Minister! It is a pity you cut them in the first place. Improved school bus services are also proposed. These are the people who at the beginning of this year cut school bus services. Mr Kaine did it. He was the Minister. You cannot blame anyone else for this one, Mr Kaine. Now he is saying, "Mr Graham has a good idea. We could improve the school bus service". Damn right you could! But you should not have cut it in the first place.

We heard that the holiday and summer network should follow weekday travel patterns. These are the people who, for three weeks in 1995-96 and again in 1996-97, put on a holiday timetable based on the Saturday service, a service which guaranteed that whole swaths of people who relied on the bus to get to work could not use it because it did not run when they wanted to use it. In spite of all the criticism from the community,

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