Page 2930 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 14 August 2019
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Why do people want buses rerouted away from Anketell Street? When I was there this morning having breakfast, I got a pretty good idea of the problem, as if I needed to, because I have been there so many times in the past. Even at 8 o’clock in the morning the disruption caused by the constant procession of buses adjacent to the cafés was very apparent. There is a pedestrian crossing in the middle of that area, which means that buses and cars stop and then have to accelerate away, which creates more noise and disruption. The buses are stopping and starting. They do not stop and start to pick up passengers. There are no bus stops along that stretch. They are not going down Anketell Street because they need to for a bus stop. That is not the case.
While you are trying to dine or have a cup of coffee and a chat with friends, it is quite a noisy environment, which is not conducive to relaxation. I am sure that the café owners down there hear this from their patrons over and over again. We were able to ban smoking in cafés and other dining areas because we do not think patrons want it, but here we have the government running buses with fumes a few metres from where people are eating and drinking. In other areas we have strict control over noise, but here we allow the buses to run down the middle of the street where people are eating and drinking.
This is not news for the government. This is not a new problem. The government had a petition back in 2017. For all I know, they were aware of community and resident concerns before then. In 2017 they had the petition. When this was tabled, my colleague Mr Parton said what many of us in Tuggeranong agreed with. He said:
I fear the government is not really serious at all about revitalising Tuggeranong town centre. It is going through the motions of what looks like an ill-conceived, sloppy, cut-price excuse for revitalisation so it can tick that box and say, “Yeah, we did that. And let’s face it, it’s only Tuggeranong.”
This is the view of this government over and over again. Tuggeranong is the neglected, the forgotten. If the government is serious about making a more comfortable and social environment in Tuggeranong, it will give serious consideration to this motion today. It will not amend it, not vote it down, but listen to the people of Tuggeranong, who have made their views very clear. I would like the government to, for once, listen to the people of Tuggeranong and to remove the buses from Anketell Street once and for all, not next year, not as an election promise for one day in the never-never but as soon as possible, possibly later this year, for example, because then it will have been two years since that petition. Two years should be plenty of time for a bit of thinking, a bit of planning and a bit of action. Two years is plenty of time for this to take place.
The Tuggeranong Community Council wrote to the former Minister for Transport in May of this year reiterating the long-held Tuggeranong Community Council view about buses on Anketell Street. I know that Ms Le Couteur, for example, is well aware of this. She goes often to Tuggeranong Community Council meetings and has heard this firsthand over and over again. It said:
In November 2017, the Tuggeranong Community Council submitted to government a Bus Petition (with over 740 signatures) to re-route the buses from in front of the Hyperdome—
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