Page 3183 - Week 10 - Thursday, 18 October 2007
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particular Mr Mulcahy, are not aware that my office has to deal with absolutely every portfolio. If we make mistakes, I do not go up there and roar at people. That is not my style. I reckon we do the best we can. I have learned not to shrink when Mr Mulcahy casts his glinted eye upon me.
Today being the last sitting day in Anti-Poverty Week, I want to just read a little bit out of the speech that I was not given leave to make this morning when we discussed the planning and environment report on ACTION buses, because I want to stress the link between public transport and alleviating poverty. I will not be able to read too much of this speech, but I do refer people to the report that I mentioned on Tuesday, Living on the edge, which was put together by Uniting Care Kippax and Belconnen Community Services, because it is a fine-grained social analysis which I believe should underpin all service delivery, including bus services, and going so far as the location of medical centres.
I said the other day that there are 400 families without cars in that region. People will probably be aware that it is not a region that even has a high school at the moment. It certainly does not have any colleges, and a couple of the primary schools are being closed. It has a very high proportion of Indigenous people compared to the rest of Canberra, low levels of education, quite high levels of public housing, a high proportion of single-parent families, lots of people doing unpaid childcare and a lot of unpaid assistance to people with disabilities. These factors are combined with geographic isolation, inadequate transport and poor community health and educational services. So it is an area with localised disadvantage.
With 400 people without cars, what we need to know is that it is the largest number of vehicle-less households, and, at nine per cent, it is above the national average. The average is seven per cent in the ACT, and that is matched only by areas near town centres where perhaps people choose not to have cars because they need them less. The median household income is two-thirds of the ACT figure.
I will just give you an idea of how ACTION buses do not work for them. If you needed to take a bus to get to an 11.00 am medical appointment, public transport from west Belconnen is such that to get to Calvary will take you approximately 1¼ hours in each direction; to Canberra Hospital will take you a minimum of 1½ hours in each direction; and to get to specialist services at John James takes two hours in each direction. Of course, with the off-peak bus timetables in the area, it just is too hard. One bus per hour on a weekend means that people are going to do their best to try any other form of transport available. There are no buses at all in the evening on a weekend.
One of the suggestions that I had, after going to the chefs challenge on Monday where three top chefs made food on a very low budget—very delicious food, by the way—was: what about those 400 people without a car? How do they get the ingredients? The chefs had gone to the markets and had all kinds of beautiful fresh food. We are always telling people to eat more vegetables, to be healthy. This is primary health care.
I am suggesting that the government should set up a free bus service on the weekend that picks people up from the suburbs of west Belconnen, with a chef perhaps the first time—someone to guide them around the market and to show them what is good
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