Page 1988 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 15 May 2013
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frequency of the services in the parliamentary triangle, you will not find another part of Canberra that is as highly serviced from all sides of town. It is on both the red and blue rapid services, so that is moving buses through every five to seven to 15 minutes through the working week. It also has a number of specific route services that travel in there outside the rapid service.
There is a lot of information on the ACTION website about frequency and service. In fact, I think there is a dedicated brochure around services in the parliamentary triangle that you can search, and you can see the level of frequency provided. Sure, we can talk about whether that meets the needs—I understand there are some capacity issues in the peaks, but there is certainly a lot of capacity through the working day.
I know we were looking at promoting the services in the parliamentary triangle. That overlapped with the decision about the centenary bus loop, I think, so we may have put that on hold. But we can certainly have a look at that to see whether that should get a push forward in light of this decision and also reviewing the use of the centenary bus loop which travels through that part of Canberra.
Overall, as I said this morning, there are very big elements of the budget which the ACT government supports and we think are positive for Canberra and positive for the country. But there are also elements of the budget which will be tough for Canberra. It is certainly a mixed result for the city. In some ways—and it is difficult to admit this—I think some of the speculation about what could have happened to the public service had led us to be gravely concerned about any efficiencies that would have been sought through this budget, and those concerns have not been met by the delivery of this budget, although we acknowledge that there are efficiencies in there. The reversing of the efficiency dividend is very welcome. Reducing that from four per cent back to 1.2 per cent I think is a very sensible decision, and it is a decision that has been taken in a very tough budget environment.
The government will support this motion with the amendment when it is moved by Mr Rattenbury. We will reflect the financial impact of the federal budget in our budget, and it is important that our budget do that. But our budget will not be a critique of another jurisdiction’s budget. If we were to follow the line that Mr Smyth provided, we can then put a whole range of other critiques about other budgets in that paper.
Mr Coe: You never did that to the Costello budgets?
MS GALLAGHER: Well, it has never been the intention of the ACT budget to take that role. Our budget is focused on our budget. It will reflect financial changes that flow from decisions of other governments—in this case, the federal government. It will be reflected in the budget paper, and that is important, too.
MR HANSON (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (10.40): I would like to start by commending Mr Smyth on this motion. If there is anyone that stands up for good budget management, it is Mr Smyth. What he is calling for is sensible, and I am glad that it will be in the main supported, although I think we do need to consider what it means by inserting “financial”, and whether the broader aspects of what we need to see in terms of the implications for families are going to be addressed.
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