Electric buses in Canberra splashed with the words: "1 of 106 zero-emission electric buses" has been slammed as a "blatant lie" as there are only 12 buses currently on the road.
The ACT government has defended the bus advertising saying the figure includes buses that have been ordered during a fiery debate in the Legislative Assembly.
Opposition transport spokesman Mark Parton brought forward a motion calling on the government to stop misleading Canberrans.
"Most sensible people would arrive at the conclusion that the message that is being transmitted is that this bus right here is one of 106 in our fleet," he said.
"The claim is false. It is false and it should be removed."
But this claim was strenuously denied by the government.
Acting Transport Minister Tara Cheyne said the motion was a stunt. She said the 106 figure took into account the buses already on order.
"Those are one of 106. There are 106 on order," she said.
"There's nothing misleading."
Mr Parton said it was not sufficient to trumpet the buses if they were not here and likened it to a parent wanting and planning for more children.
"This is like a mother-of-two rocking up for an event to get some freebies for her children and saying 'I've got four kids' and they say 'where are your other two children?' and saying 'my husband and I are planning to have two more'," he said.
"A family of four is not a family of six because they're planning to have two more children."
Ms Cheyne said Mr Parton was prompted to do the motion following an article in The Canberra Times.
"Mr Parton is only inspired to do this motion because of Jasper Lindell's article 10 days ago," she said.
This article was about the arrival of a new bus at the Belconnen depot, which was announced with great fanfare by Transport Minister Chris Steel in November. But more than five months later the bus has not entered service.
It is one of four electric buses, manufactured by Custom Denning, not yet on the road as they are undergoing a thorough inspection and commissioning process before they enter the service.
Ms Cheyne said when it was going through a commissioning process there were some technical specification issues which delayed their arrival on the roads. She said this was regrettable.
"We've got to make sure that these vehicles meet our standards and until they do meet our standard we're not going to put them on the road," she said.
"There were identified technical specification issues and that meant all vehicles were required to be returned to Custom for some remediation ... these vehicles are now back in Canberra with Transport Canberra for re-inspection."
Greens transport spokeswoman Jo Clay also hit out at government targets that had not been met.
She said a September 2020 plan wanted there to be at least 65 electric buses on the road by 2023-24 but these targets were not met. She also said a Woden bus depot was supposed to be completed by the end of 2022 but this had not happened.
"There are reasons these deadlines weren't met but the ambition of 2020 has been significantly scaled back and the minister is now refusing to grow the bus fleet significantly at any time in the future," Ms Clay said.
