Page 3113 - Week 10 - Thursday, 18 October 2007
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The following general purpose standing committees be established and each committee to inquire into and report on matters referred to it by the Assembly or matters that are considered by the committee to be of concern to the community:
It stated further:
a Standing Committee on Planning and Environment to examine matters related to planning, public works and land management, conservation and heritage, transport services and environment and ecological sustainability.
The terms of reference established for this report should, in my view, have taken in more of the elements relative to the ACT’s sustainable transport plan than simply referring to ACTION buses. And of course we see in the first element of the terms of reference that the Standing Committee on Planning and Environment “inquire into and investigate the services provided by ACTION buses” and ACTION buses only.
I think that the committee have missed a great opportunity to look at all of the integrated elements of transport in the city. For example, the terms of reference should have included the taxi industry because I believe the taxi industry is an integrated element of the ACT’s transport plan. The committee has gone missing in action and failed to address this very, very important issue by focusing simply on ACTION buses. The ACTION bus mass transport plan, on its own, is of little use to the ACT community if we do not also know how the taxi industry and other elements of transportation are integrated with it. So the government has missed the boat on that.
Indeed, we know that the taxi industry in the ACT is in chaos. While we realise that the terms of reference perhaps should have included it, they have not. There is a need for the industry to be included in any sustainable transport discussion. As I say, the government missed the boat on that and it is very sad that, again, the problems we have with the taxi industry are entirely ignored.
A lot of the feedback we are getting from our constituents is that they are deeply dissatisfied with the taxi services available here in the ACT, so why did this committee not wrap up this particular issue and pull that into its terms of reference? And why did the committee not examine the taxi service as an integrated partner, against the background of the services being currently provided by ACTION buses? They did not because they have a narrow-scope approach, as usual.
Mr Speaker, I want to now talk about ACTION buses, of course. I want to look at the question of violence at interchanges and on our buses. Recommendation 47 states:
The Committee recommends that the ACT Government progress the upgrading, at the earliest opportunity, of the bus interchanges at Woden and Belconnen.
We know—we have talked about it many times in this place—that security at interchanges is an urgent and a major priority in restoring an adequate bus service, now so badly run down, and there is no doubt that, if this recommendation is taken up with due haste, then, yes, eventually the violence issues will be ameliorated. But the problem is that any plans to upgrade bus interchanges are medium to long-term.
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