Page 505 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 19 February 2020
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working in a suburb that no longer has any public transportation at all. Hume is filled with businesses that are engaged in light manufacturing, providing many opportunities for young Canberrans to apprentice in a trade, but now it has been cut off for any who do not own their own vehicles or are too young to get a licence.
Nick has tried to deal with this disastrous change by catching rides to and from Hume with others he knows who also work there. This fix, however, proved unreliable, and consequently Nick struggled to consistently get himself to the worksite on time. Sometimes, despite his best planning, he could not get there at all. The end result is that Nick faces losing his apprenticeship, along with the hopes and dreams attached to it.
This is the last thing he wants to happen, so Nick has started travelling to Hume via taxi. This costs him $25 each way, he explained to me. If he also needs to take a taxi home afterwards, the total expense is $50 per day. To put this into context, that is almost half of Nick’s daily pay rate. The Barr government’s decision to cancel his bus nearly cost Nick his job, and now it is costing him nearly half of his income.
I hope, Mr Assistant Speaker, that you understand how Nick feels. I think it should be obvious to every member of this Assembly what Nick thinks of this government’s so-called improvements to the bus network. Nick has done everything right, but this government’s failed transport changes have made his life very hard. Nick deserves an apology, and forgotten Hume deserves a bus. Nick wants to complete his apprenticeship, and that means the bus needs to come back.
I join with my Liberal colleagues in calling on the Minister for Transport to apologise to Nick and the many thousands of Canberrans like him. I also hope that those opposite will have the good sense to genuinely fix this nightmare and bring Hume’s bus back.
MS LAWDER (Brindabella) (3.19): Mr Assistant Speaker, Mr Steel has referred to the fact that they are making improvements to the bus network, but you can ask any resident of Tuggeranong whether that is the case and they will say no. The government’s own figures back that up. There has been a reduction in patronage of public transport in Tuggeranong since the introduction of network 19. This is not an improvement. As with many other things that this government do, they take things away. They have taken away bus services in Wanniassa, for example; then, when they have forced people to go to the park and ride, they have said they will increase the number of car parks at the park and ride. Now they have to put in more footpaths to lead to the park and ride, and the park-and-ride footpath from the car park goes through a floodway.
There are many problems here. But the crux of this matter is that the government have taken their bus services away, given them some paltry little thing, and expected them to be grateful. I can tell you, minister for buses, that the people of Tuggeranong are not grateful for these little crumbs.
Apart from the petition that my colleague Miss C Burch put to the Assembly, containing about 7,000 signatures, there was a specific petition about buses in
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