Page 2144 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 28 August 2007
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first thing I would like to say relates to the committee staff. I join with Mr Gentleman in thanking Hanna Jaireth for all her work in this inquiry. Something that I am hearing more and more is that committee staff members generally are significantly overburdened at the moment. I think that was true in relation to this report and it is true in relation to a number of other major reports.
Because of what the committee was asked to inquire into, and notwithstanding the extension of time, I think it did a significant job. Even though the committee had very limited resources I think this is a reasonable report. Notwithstanding that, I do not agree with all the recommendations and I have made some comments in relation to them. Referring to its workload, I think that committee staff members are significantly overburdened at the moment.
I think this report could have gone further in its economic analysis and in other areas, but I do not think the committee had the resources to examine some of the economics behind the positives and the negatives of sustainable transport and of public transport in the territory. We would have liked to have done that but I do not think we had the ability with the resources we had and within the time frame we had.
I want to touch briefly on what came through very strongly, which was the reason this report came about in the first place, that is, concerns over the new bus network or the ACTION timetable. In his speech Mr Gentleman highlighted that only 49 per cent of people were satisfied with the timetable, and that customer satisfaction generally was at 71 per cent. These concerning figures must be worked on strongly. No government should be happy with a bus network that has satisfaction ratings as low as those. I would say overall that 71 per cent is a fairly low satisfaction rating and that we should be aiming for a much higher rating of about 80 per cent or 90 per cent.
We heard from a number of stakeholders and from a number of community and industry groups. The evidence we heard on this issue from a range of stakeholders was not all negative but some really strong comments came through. One of the comments that sticks out—I think it is referred to in the report and I certainly referred to it in my additional comments—is that this is the worst timetable in 30 years. That comment was made by TWU delegates appearing before the committee, so real issues are being raised.
As I said earlier, in the time that we had and with the resources that we had we were not able to get to the bottom of how to improve our public transport system in the ACT. But some of these recommendations at least go some way towards sparking discussion and hopefully getting the government interested in making some significant improvements. Let me make a couple of other points. One of the things that came through was concern about the bus services in Gungahlin.
Young people who were looking to access bus services expressed real concern about the gaps. We heard from them that it used to take 15 minutes from some parts of Gungahlin to go by bus to the local youth centre, and that from other parts of Gungahlin it could take as long as an hour. Obviously that is an issue of concern for young people who are particularly reliant on buses.
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