Seventeen extra school buses will hit Canberra’s roads today, with existing services expected to be full to bursting as the Government’s pre-election school bus scheme kicks off. Just under 17,400 students have already received their free bus passes, with about 900 applications rejected. Urban Services Minister Brendan Smyth said 17 Read more…
The ACT Government’s free bus travel scheme discriminates against some students and will destabilise government schools, leading to some closures, according to an Australia Institute report. Given to The Canberra Times two days before the scheme swings into action, the report slams the pre-election policy as money-wasting and biased towards Read more…
In just six days as many as 17,000 Canberra schoolchildren will walk through the morning chill to the bus stop and catch a free ride to school, courtesy of the ACT taxpayer and a Liberal Government very keen on winning another term. Public servants and staff at ACTION buses have Read more…
The $1.4 million fee to hire buses to cope with the start of the free school bus travel scheme on September 3 has been labelled a “waste of money” by Labor MLA Wayne Berry.
The Liberals promised they’d do it six years ago, but no-one dreamed they would. Non Government school lobbyists had occasionally raised the free school bus plan (promised by the Liberals in 1995, but not delivered) but it had long been dismissed by unions and government-school lobby groups. The thinking was Read more…