Page 4399 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 8 December 1993
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Let me say straight out for the record that ACTION bus drivers help Canberra people with lost children or lost property and give assistance with directions and shopping. Drivers are friendly most of the time, and they are hard working. Let me put that on the public record to make sure that there is no accusation from the Minister or anybody else that we are here only to kick the heads of bus drivers or anybody else.
What I would say to some bus drivers - I stress the word "some" - is that they should realise that unrealistic working conditions are costing jobs for some of their mates who are out of work. That is one statement that I can make and will continue to make. It seems to me that some drivers can drive for only five hours in an eight-hour shift. Is he or she willing to learn a useful skill and be usefully employed during the time that a driver currently, perhaps, is playing billiards or tennis? Could he or she then be usefully employed in the workshop, around the grounds or cleaning bus-shelters? I think the answer to that is, "Why not?". Why cannot there be this multiskilling? I note that from time to time the Minister does talk about the potential of multiskilling. Other people also talk about that point.
Madam Speaker, the $63m government subsidy to ACTION supports the highest bus operating costs in the country. The Travers Morgan report, the benchmarking study that I have referred to, told the Government what we already knew and what the Government knew as well; namely, that these costs are due, in the main, to things like excess staffing levels, high unit staff costs, poor productivity, constraints on the driver award, low driver productivity, high driver pay, overstaffing and high staff costs in administration, high capital charges from a new bus fleet, and the high level of other assets. That comes directly out of the Travers Morgan report. The report recommended immediately implementing cost savings of some $15m per annum, saying that experience elsewhere in Australia shows that this is quite reasonable and achievable. The report also said that everybody else who was compared runs their buses for less and, perhaps in certain circumstances, better than we do in the ACT. A saving of $15m in one year makes the Government's boast of a projected $10m in three years look slightly wimpy.
The subsidy to ACTION buses is so large that, if the Government wished, it could use it to buy every ACTION bus passenger a car. That might cause some people to stop and think. It made me stop and think when I heard it. I see that the Minister is frowning. I frowned as well. Let us look at it realistically. It is a simplistic analogy.
Mr Cornwell: No, he is trying to work out what you mean.
Mr Connolly: I am always trying to work out what Mr De Domenico means.
MR DE DOMENICO: Listen to this, Minister. It is a simplistic analogy. There are 300,000 people in Canberra and between 5 per cent and 7 per cent of commuters catch buses. How many people catch buses depends on your mathematics, Mr Minister, but let us be generous and say that 10 per cent of the population regularly catches buses. That $63m divided by 30,000 is $2,100, which is enough to buy a second-hand car. Remember that a lot of ACTION's passengers are schoolchildren, so you could probably spend more.
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