Page 4405 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 8 December 1993
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Mr De Domenico: No, we did not say that.
MR CONNOLLY: You put out your press releases earlier on, and you come in here and you make your speeches, as you did today, saying, "ACTION is terribly inefficient; it does not charge enough for fares", and then, when the Government moves and increases ACTION fares, you say, "Shock, horror! You put your fares up". It is this shallow populism that marks the Opposition. You attack us for not having our fares high enough, and then you attack us for raising fares.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I have been critical, and remain critical, of the report by the Industry Commission on public transport. I have said in this place and elsewhere that I believe that the Industry Commission approaches its task with ideological blinkers. It approaches a task with a foregone outcome that leads to the conclusion that privatisation and corporatisation is always the answer. A critique of the Industry Commission which makes this point very effectively was written by Paul Mees from the faculty of environmental planning at the University of Melbourne. It was published in the Canberra Times on 3 November 1993. Mr Mees makes the point that if you look at the Industry Commission report and its annexures, if you look at the raw material on which the Industry Commission purportedly based its findings, it contains analyses of very efficient, publicly owned and publicly operated public transport models in Toronto, Washington DC, Vancouver, Zurich and Munich.
However, Mr Deputy Speaker, when you go to the report, it also contains an analysis of London public transport, which has undergone a process of corporatisation and privatisation. The raw material shows that you have, in London Transport, an organisation that has shown considerable improvements in efficiency over recent years, a privately operated public transport provider. It shows organisations which have shown marked improvements in efficiency, namely, publicly owned, publicly operated public transport companies, public transport arms of government, in Toronto, Washington, Vancouver, Zurich and Munich. However, when it comes to its conclusion, it ignores the evidence which shows efficient publicly owned and operated systems and says, "The evidence shows that the only way to be efficient is to go down the path of London Transport". That is a severe methodological flaw which undermines the objectivity of the report. It finds efficient and inefficient public and private public transport providers. It draws the conclusion that the only way to become more efficient is to privatise and corporatise. It ignores the experience, which it has reported on in its annexures, of efficient and effective publicly owned and publicly operated public transport operations.
The Industry Commission's glib dismissal of ACTION's program for achieving a 20 per cent reduction in subsidy, I think, again undermines the value of its report. They simply say, "You must do better; you must do faster". As I have pointed out, the level of savings that we are achieving is dramatic. When compared with levels that are being achieved in other States it stands out. To compare with our $10m reduction, New South Wales would have to pull a reduction of $225m and Victoria would have to pull a reduction of $184m. I would like to see what happens over the coming years. I have some scepticism as to whether some of these bold statements of the Victorian Transport Minister will be achieved.
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