Page 4404 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 8 December 1993
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We must talk about the deficit. Mr De Domenico likes to plot together all the costs of ACTION, including capital works, and call that the deficit; but the deficit is the cost of recurrent operations, the extent to which there is a subsidy for recurrent operations, and that figure for 1991-92 of $49m compares to $923m in Victoria and $1,125m in New South Wales. That equates to a deficit per household of $540 in the ACT, $580 in New South Wales and $640 in Victoria. So our operating deficits per household are lower in this Territory than in Victoria and New South Wales. If those States were to achieve 20 per cent reductions we would be talking about a $184m saving for Victoria and a $225m saving for New South Wales. They are not achieving those figures.
There is a lot of bold rhetoric, and I note Mr Brown's projections in Victoria about what he is going to do; but I also read regularly in the media about the complete fiasco they have got into with their tram system. They are trying to flog off and get rid of certain trams, and they have the union, heritage groups and everybody else opposing that. As is often the case with a Liberal government, there is lots of bluster, there is lots of talk, but they are not actually getting very far. Mr Deputy Speaker, as I say, the level of recurrent deficit and the level of recurrent subsidy for ACTION is too high and we are reducing it, but it is running lower at the moment than Victoria or New South Wales. Our targeted saving, that $10m or 20 per cent, is far in advance of the savings that are being achieved elsewhere.
Mr Deputy Speaker, we also constantly hear from the Liberal Party this view that nobody uses the buses. In fact, figures from both the Industry Commission report and a report which I find rather more useful than the Industry Commission report because it is a purely statistical analysis and has no ideological baggage accompanying it - it draws no conclusion; it just reports the facts - that is, the performance indicators for government trading enterprises that was published in July of this year, the red book, show that boardings per head of population for the ACTION bus system run at 83.9 in the ACT. That is the second highest, compared to New South Wales. It is higher than Victoria. One may be surprised at that, but it shows that in fact there is a high level of usage here. The ratepayer survey that was conducted some little time ago showed, I think, some 32 per cent of households where ACTION buses had been used.
We do not have as high a rate of commuter use as we would like. The Government is addressing that and is encouraging commuter usage by its strategy of increasing parking charges at a higher rate than increases in fare levels, and expanding on innovations like three for free and the commuter express services that were introduced late last year in Tuggeranong and are proving remarkably successful. We would like to get a higher rate of commuter use, but a lot of people other than commuters use ACTION buses.
One area, Mr Deputy Speaker, where it is clear that we are lagging the field, where our results are the worst, is fare box return, the level to which we get return through the fare box. The average fare per boarding in the ACT is 70c. Actually, it is not the worst. Western Australia and Victoria are slightly worse, but in the other States the average seems to be around $1. That tells us, Mr Deputy Speaker, that our fares are too low. During the budget period, what did the Opposition do? It put out a press release saying, "Shock, horror, scandal! ACTION fares are going up; this is a terrible thing; the Government is to be condemned".
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