Page 4401 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 8 December 1993
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
philosophical shackles which will chain this Government to conservative ways of managing essential services. The Follett Government's reaction to the Industry Commission is old fashioned and conservative. In fact it is a scared reaction. The Follett Government is unable to grasp new concepts of management efficiency, and its lack of vision is costing every Canberra ratepayer hundreds and thousands of dollars.
Contracting out in London, England, where regulation was separated from service delivery and service delivery opened to competition, resulted in huge savings and better service. I have spoken before about the savings in service in Victoria and New South Wales. A publicly owned company carved out of the old monopoly was awarded contracts for nearly 50 per cent of all routes at costs some 20 per cent lower than the public monopoly level before the introduction of competitive tendering. For example, the Minister informed me in reply to a question on notice that the utilisation of the government owned Totalcare mini-bus fleet is 25 per cent. We own a fleet of mini-buses, Mr Deputy Speaker, that are hardly ever used. Why not use the Totalcare mini-buses in the 75 per cent of time that they are not used for late runs on routes where there are only a few passengers? Then there is the November Auditor-General's report - once again, not something done by the Liberal Party - which found that 90 per cent of ACTION bus drivers and workshop staff earned more than $7,600 each in overtime payments last year. The Auditor-General went on to say that disability allowances in ACTION workshops worth $440,000 a year were paid regardless of whether the employee worked in conditions that warranted the payment of the allowance. The report again confirmed what we already knew - that ACTION buses must be reformed.
I am going to discuss just one page of the recommendations from the Industry Commission report. It was commissioned by the Labor Government. Before I do that I want to point out that it is not only the Industry Commission, Travers Morgan and the Auditor-General that talk about reforms. We also know, for example, that the Transport Workers Union has called for reform, and so it should.
Mr Lamont: Micro-economic reform.
MR DE DOMENICO: Micro-economic reform. Thank you, Mr Lamont. The Transport Workers Union is so concerned about the lack of micro-economic reform that I believe that it has put on the table for discussion some $6.5m worth of micro-economic reform. Mr Connolly listens from time to time, but perhaps other people do not listen. The Transport Workers Union is so concerned about the slow pace of micro-economic reform, and especially in enterprise bargaining levels, that it has pulled out of the CCG. On 1 November the Transport Workers Union wrote to the Minister for Industrial Relations, Mr Berry. I quote from its letter dated 1 November, signed by Peter Schulz:
Dear Minister
The Transport Workers' Union of Australia has long been concerned about the bureaucratic nature of enterprise bargaining within the Australian Capital Territory Government Service. The processes set in place for the achievement of productivity, efficiency and resultant wage outcomes are cumbersome, time consuming and relegate the pace of reform to that of the slowest participant.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .