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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (2 July) . . Page.. 2204 ..
MR BERRY (continuing):
followed up to sort out these issues. He had wrecked the motorbike, so he was several thousand dollars out of pocket, and had damaged his clothing and that sort of thing. With a little bit more care with our lines and signs, I am absolutely certain that this incident would not have happened because this rider fell into a trap because of the failure of the Government, us, the Assembly, to properly maintain the lines and signs on a median strip.
We are all familiar with the traffic calming devices in various suburbs. There happens to be one in my street; it was put there some years ago. This rider was riding down the centre line and the centre line led him to a median strip where all of the reflective paint had weathered away. Of course, he did not see it as it was late at night and the bike did a somersault, resulting in the injuries that I referred to. In this day and age we should not see those sorts of things happening on our roads. We should pay a little bit more attention to that. It is not as if that is just one issue. It is a quite serious issue which threatens the lives of some people but affects the lives of many. Of course, it ends up being a cost to the community generally.
I will read to you some parts of a letter I received today:
As a motor cyclist who commutes daily, I too am concerned at the poor standards of signage on local roads. As an example, I draw to your attention the roadworks at the corner of Casteau and Hodges Streets, Higgins. At this intersection the road was dug up over a week ago, but not as yet resurfaced, yet there is not one sign to warn motorists that repairs are underway.
It goes on to say:
I find this incredibly irresponsible - should an accident occur because of this, no doubt the ACT Government would be totally liable. With the very high costs of vehicle registration these days, we deserve better.
There is there - and, I believe, in the case of the motorcyclist I referred to - the question of the liability of the Government, which would have an impact on costs to the taxpayer. Mr Speaker, I have raised those issues because I expect a better performance from the Government; in particular, from the Minister. I have written to the Minister in relation to one of these matters and, if I need to, I will take up this matter with him. It concerns me that we are faced with a serious problem for motorists. As a former motorcyclist who has become a little too fearful of those machines to ride them any more, I can see that motorcyclists in particular would be concerned because they can be vulnerable if those sorts of forces are working against them.
The next issue that I would like to talk about is that of redundancies in the Department of Urban Services. I have said a little bit about that in relation to the Chief Minister's portfolio and I will try not to repeat myself too much. It is a serious matter in the Department of Urban Services and lots of people are going to lose their jobs. I dislike the way that the Minister described how the proposal was going to help workers. I think he said that it would provide them with some dignity. There is nothing dignified about losing your job and it is pretty hard to dream up a set of circumstances which would make somebody feel dignified when they lose their job, unless you were to try to
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