Page 1946 - Week 07 - Thursday, 23 August 2007
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able to relay an image to the police. As I said, we are also looking at further shatter-proofing the buses. I really do not know how ACTION, as a bus service, can prevent somebody standing on the side of the road from hurling a missile at a passing bus.
Members interjecting—
MR HARGREAVES: I am not treating this issue frivolously at all. This is a very serious issue which gives us an enormous amount of concern because our bus drivers and our passengers are at risk. The missile that was thrown in Gilmore, a rock of a significant size, went through the windscreen and barely missed the bus driver’s head. He received some minor lacerations from flying glass but I suspect that he might have been killed had the rock hit him. I do not know how ACTION can prevent this from occurring. Mr Pratt asked what ACTION was doing. I do not know what we can do. We do not have the powers of arrest. If a bus driver sees someone standing on the road what is he to do?
Mr Pratt: What work are you doing with the police?
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Pratt!
MR HARGREAVES: I have already said in this house that we have had conversations with the police. We have continuing conversations with the police. Duress buttons are available on the buses if a driver believes that something is about to happen. Communication systems are also available on buses. All the information is then fed to the police to determine whether or not there is a pattern, so that plain clothes police officers can arrange to be on a bus at a predicted time. That is what we are doing. I am hearing from Mr Pratt that ACTION—a bus service, a mass transport system—is not doing enough to stop people chucking rocks at its buses.
I honestly do not know what Mr Pratt is prepared to offer by way of a solution to this problem. I would be delighted to hear from Mr Pratt, but not by way of interjection.
Mr Pratt: What sort of targeted police operations would be happening in concert with ACTION staff, for example?
MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Pratt, you have asked a question. The minister is entitled to answer it.
MR HARGREAVES: I would be delighted to receive something in writing from Mr Pratt, a positive suggestion for the way forward. The Transport Workers Union, the police, ACTION drivers, bus supervisors and ACTION management all meet fairly regularly to talk about how to prevent these things. If there is something else that Mr Pratt in his wisdom knows about that I am not aware of, I would be delighted to hear from him a suggested way forward. In his press release tomorrow I would like to see what magic things he will pull out of his hip pocket, things that we have not already done, to fix this problem. I have just been handed a note that states that, following a tip-off, police are interviewing two youths this afternoon.
Mr Pratt: It’s about time. It has taken six months.
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