Page 887 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 2 May 2007

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Chief Minister has said that perhaps one day the busway will be built. In terms of public policy, I welcomed Mr Hargreaves’s announcement that there would be no budget bid for the busway, and I know that Mr Seselja metaphorically gleefully danced on the grave of the busway.

I also welcome the demise of the real-time public transport information as an inappropriate expenditure. I do not deny that real-time bus information or public transport information is a good thing, but at the moment there are things that we would be better off spending our money on than that level of sophistication. First of all, we need to have a reasonably regular bus system that would provide the people of the ACT with an alternative to using their cars.

Instead, we should mourn this government’s complete abandonment of any public transport policy. With the changing of the guard on 13 April, we have a minister who has taken on the role of sole commissar of public transport in the ACT. He has no ideas and no vision when it comes to innovation in public transport. To his credit, Mr Hargreaves has done some innovative things in relation to the taxi industry. Some of the changes we have seen may well be improvements, and he should be encouraged in that regard. But in every other aspect this government is bereft of ideas in public transport.

It is a great shame that the enthusiasm that Mr Corbell started off with in public transport has come to nothing, and I think that is probably because much of the public transport debate became derailed in the drawing up of the sustainable public transport plan. I think the government relied too heavily on advice from people who had their experience in the development of the Brisbane busway. We had transport economists who came here during that time who really were not in touch with what was happening in Canberra. So out of touch were they that they actually had parking spaces designated for them at ACTPLA. (Time expired.)

Anzac Day

Tharwa bridge

MR PRATT (Brindabella) (6.09): I rise tonight to quickly address two issues. The first is Anzac Day. I would like to thank John King and the men and women of the Tuggeranong RSL branch for making opposition members welcome. I thank them for their hospitality at the end of what for those men and women was a day of commemoration and thinking about the loss of friends in various theatres of war.

I would also like to put on the record my admiration for Major General Clunies-Ross, Steve Gower and the members of the Australian War Memorial committee for their work at the Anzac Day ceremony and also the preparation of the Australian War Memorial, which was well used by a lot of people for the rest of the day after the main service. Congratulations to them.

Secondly, I want to mention the Tharwa bridge. Today we tabled a petition with 1,909 signatures of people calling for the urgent installation of a low-level bridge crossing across the Murrumbidgee as a temporary arrangement pending the commencement of the bridge project.


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