Page 859 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 6 April 2022
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might succeed and push people to drive a bus when they are tired or ill or simply not up to it. I frankly cannot imagine what happens when someone drives a crowded bus on a busy road in that state. So we need to build up our frontline workforce in a long-term way and then increase our services. We cannot skip ahead to the end. We have got to do it as fast as we can but we cannot do it today.
The second part of Mr Parton’s motion is really interesting. It is a free bus trial. I am genuinely unsure if free tickets will drive uptake on our buses. All of the feedback I have heard and all of the research I have seen shows that, in Canberra, the barrier to the bus is not ticket price. People want better buses, not free buses. I was very interested in that figure Mr Parton quoted—that the trial, in the first week, increased bus patronage by 13 per cent. That is a really, really interesting figure.
I did see this morning from the Public Transport Association of Canberra that the ABS found that, in Canberra, only three per cent of Canberrans think fares are a barrier. We might be a bit different here; we might not be. We are already one of the cheapest jurisdictions for public transport in the country. Most people already find the bus cheaper than driving and parking. Free bus travel may or may not increase uptake.
More importantly, will it help with the cost of living for those who need it most? I think that is what the free bus trial was probably more about. I am not convinced that it is really well targeted. We have already got free and cheap bus travel for a lot of people here. We have got one of the most progressive fare systems in Australia. It is free for a concession card holder travelling off-peak between 9 am and 4.30 pm, or after 6 pm on weekdays, and all day on weekends and public holidays. That is a permanent free service and I am really glad that we have it.
So a proper cost of living intervention for those who need it may not be more free bus travel. I suspect that a much bigger financial problem for people who need help is probably the federal income support system, which simply is not high enough to keep you out of poverty. That is one reason why the Australian Greens want income support payments lifted to $88 a day.
If free or cheaper services would help, I would be really happy to look at the groups of people who need that most. There might be some groups who are missing out. We might find that large families with a lot of kids maybe need some more concession rates than we are offering. We might find that there are some other groups. I think that is a really great conversation to have right now. But that is not the same as a short-term free trial for everyone, regardless of whether or not they actually need the help.
This is also a reasonably costly experiment. A six-week trial would cost almost $2 million. I did speak to Minister Steel about that and, on balance, I think it is a really good idea to have a free trial at some point. I suspect we might learn something. We will certainly find out if price actually is a barrier to uptake or if it is not, and we may end up with a better bus service. Then again, we may find out that it is actually not a problem. The problem is that, when we run a free trial, I think we need to run it at a really strategic time when it will be most effective in driving behavioural change. I do not think now is the right time.
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