BEVERLEY BRILL
Mr Sturgess and Metro are really doing a number on Tasmanian bus users. They ask us to use buses, then they remove bus routes, pull down bus stops and tell people to use the net to find out about services. Since most elderly, unemployed and poor don’t have access to the net (and are major users of the buses), this is a great way to let us know that the bus service has been stopped, times changed, etc.

I have been campaigning for the return of the 268 bus route (Glenorchy/Risdon/Geilston Bay/Lindisfarne Village/Lindisfarne/Rose Bay/Rosny) through a self-funded petition. I was supported by the public, and in particular by the businesses in the Lindisfarne Village. I wrote to all three political parties and the Metro regarding the support I had received. I now have a few bits of information which I would like to impart to people via the Mercury with your permission: we are being governed by people who don’t listen – and the Metro is deaf.

1. When I first spoke with Mr Mark Stalker at the Metro about the 268 being reinstalled, he said, and I quote “it’s not going to happen”. This is before the Review. How is that democratic? How do they get away with that?

2. On 1 July I wrote to the three parties in Parliament – responses were very interesting.
(a) One of Premier Bartlett’s minions wrote and said, the Premier will respond in due course. It is now nearly the end of August and no response.
(b) The Leader of the Opposition, Will Hodgman, sent a very supportive response and said he would follow it up.
(c) The Greens Leader was probably too busy paddling in Ralph’s Bay, and I haven’t heard from him.
(d) The Minister for Infrastructure responded, after a request from Premier’s Office, with a long winded letter which didn’t even respond to the petition, waffling on about anything but the reinstatement of the 268.

One of my friends in Howrah walked to Clarence Street to catch a bus to town and discovered a dead possum in the shelter and concluded the bus may not have turned up.

Would someone please let me know how a bureaucrat can decide something before the Review? Why have I not had answers from the Greens – remember? We were to use buses to save the “footprint”? And why a politician, Mr Sturgess, cannot answer a question in relation to bus route 268 since that was what my letter and the questionnaire was about?

Yours in exasperation,

Beverley Brill