Page 2980 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 15 August 2018
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80 per cent of the 13 per cent of schoolkids catching the bus to school are high school students.
Most kids catching a bus to school catch public buses. With respect to the hysteria that has come from the opposition, I have kids that catch buses to school. Many people in this place have kids that catch buses to school. For the opposition to suggest that somehow parents are putting their kids in danger by allowing them to travel on public buses with the riffraff, as the Canberra Liberals seem to imply, is simply irresponsible.
That is the litany of commentary from those opposite. I appreciate that some of those were direct messages from people in our community, and I accept that. For each of those individuals, I understand their concern. But the way that the Liberals have gone about this today is pretty disgraceful, when we have people in our city, families in our city, who, every day, confidently have their kids catching a public bus to school. What is wrong with kids catching public buses to school? We want to see more of them. We want to see more kids catching buses to school, and there will continue to be dedicated school buses.
I say to those opposite who think that I do not take this seriously that my own kids, in primary school and high school, take buses to school. They get off at interchanges. There are actually enormous benefits in having a wide and diverse group of people in our community catching public buses. There is something fundamentally good about people catching buses together. I do not know about those opposite, but when you do, you might strike up a conversation. You might learn something new about someone in your community. You might help someone out. You might see someone else helping someone out. There is something fundamentally good about it.
What we are doing is investing a significant amount of money in more buses. That is another lunacy from those opposite. We are investing in more buses. We are investing in 80 more buses, 80 new drivers and six new rapid services. That is a fact that those opposite cannot possibly contest. There is more investment in public transport than has ever been invested in this city.
I would encourage everybody, particularly those opposite, to have a little bit of perspective in this debate. The consultation is genuine. The consultation, which closed on Sunday, has included a considerable amount of feedback. I acknowledge that many people whose services are going to change are worried about what that means for them. We are working with many schools right across the community and talking at length to them, and we will respond when we have had time to properly consider all of the feedback that we have received.
I have said publicly—and please listen; I have said it publicly in the media, and I will say it publicly again here today, as I said yesterday, which everybody opposite totally ignored—that we will be making changes. But because the consultation closed on Sunday, we cannot tell you on Wednesday what those changes will be. You should be responsible and allow the government to get on and do some good work and to stop the scaremongering that you have engaged in in this debate.
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