Page 3125 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 20 August 2019
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(2) censures the Minister for Transport and City Services for his failure to address the ongoing workforce planning issues in the Transport Portfolio, and to deliver the weekend bus network as was promised to Canberrans.
It is disappointing, incredibly disappointing, that I rise again in this place only six days after we last debated this topic to speak again about the weekend bus timetable. Six days ago we debated a motion that I brought forward, a motion that had such support that Ms Le Couteur tried her best to claim it as her own, calling on the government to address the issues with the weekend bus network.
Six days ago Minister Steel agreed to a one-month action plan to promptly investigate and address the ongoing service failures in the weekend bus network. Six days ago Minister Steel told us that he was prioritising driver recruitment and was looking to address service failures as a matter of priority. Six days ago Minister Steel told us that it was a critical focus of the government to step up recruitment, to streamline recruitment and provide flexible training solutions and to move to a rolling recruitment campaign.
Last Wednesday we had a 12-minute speech from the minister, and did he once mention cutting weekend bus services? No. Last Thursday in question time I asked the minister for transport directly if he had any plans to cut weekend services. He said he was focused on driver recruitment. I asked:
Minister, are there plans to cut weekend services because of the staffing issues you have been unable to resolve?
He replied:
As I just mentioned, the government is looking at a range of different issues to make sure that we provide reliability for weekend services. The focus for us is on recruiting more drivers. That is how we will deliver the increased services on the weekend.
You can imagine my surprise, and Ms Le Couteur’s surprise as well no doubt, when the very next morning the minister announced that he was cutting weekend bus services and that, instead of looking into other options, he was just scrapping the weekend services. Seventy per cent more weekend services. That is what Canberrans had been promised under this new network. One of the few benefits of network 19 was 70 per cent more weekend services and a true seven-day-a-week network.
Only last week Minister Steel reiterated this promise. He said:
… that is why we are focusing on the solution: recruiting more bus drivers so they can make themselves available on the weekends and deliver the 70 per cent more services we have provided under network 19.
Minister Steel cannot truly think that we believe that sometime on Thursday night he suddenly realised that he actually could not deliver on this promise. Decisions like this do not just happen overnight. Minister Steel must have known when this debate was taking place last Wednesday of the announcement that was to come.
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