6 July 2009

Alistair Coe and the The Ballad of the Working Family

| johnboy
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Alistair Coe is taking up cudgels on behalf of everyone’s favourite families, the “ordinary working families”.

Alistair’s been hard at work with a calculator (possibly a spreadsheet) and calculates that this beloved species is paying an extra $1169 per year after the Government increases to parking fees and bus fares.

    “Mr Stanhope calls himself the “Mayor of Canberra” and is the Minister for Transport, yet he has been unable to deliver a strategic approach for Canberra’s transport needs. There is nothing strategic about substantially increasing the cost of parking at the same time as substantially increasing bus fares,” said Mr Coe.

Seems like a very strategic way to bring in more money. One wonders what spending Alistair would axe if he went without this extra income?

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I agree with bd84 here – it all depends on what time the kids can be dropped off and what time you are expected to be at work.

I think Alistair’s release here makes good sense of the extra charges that are coming in and how they will affect people… take out the section on kids and it is still going to cost the individual a fair bit more per week!

peterh said :

Postalgeek said :

Looks like the kids have more economic sense than the adults in Mr. Coe’s little chart. Even more stupid is that neither parent has the fall-back line ‘I have to drive my kids to school’.

considering that if there were 2 parents, one working in woden, one in civic, why would you drive from home to civic, why wouldn’t you both drive together to woden, park, and one catch a bus to civic?

makes more sense, and reduces the costing for fuel / road use, as well as parking.

or is that too logical?

too simplistic more like it. You would have to assume that both parents start and finish work at a time that is convenient to do that. Either way you’re still looking at a fairly substantial increase in costs.

“One wonders what spending Alistair would axe if he went without this extra income?”

Eyesores built as public art would be up there I imagine.

peterh said :

or is that too logical?

this is Canberra, yes thats too logical.

Postalgeek said :

Looks like the kids have more economic sense than the adults in Mr. Coe’s little chart. Even more stupid is that neither parent has the fall-back line ‘I have to drive my kids to school’.

considering that if there were 2 parents, one working in woden, one in civic, why would you drive from home to civic, why wouldn’t you both drive together to woden, park, and one catch a bus to civic?

makes more sense, and reduces the costing for fuel / road use, as well as parking.

or is that too logical?

Looks like the kids have more economic sense than the adults in Mr. Coe’s little chart. Even more stupid is that neither parent has the fall-back line ‘I have to drive my kids to school’.

road surfacing, line marking, perhaps? with bad roads, no one could get to the parking spaces….

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