Page 4408 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 8 December 1993
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As we all know, I am associated with a company where we have just issued 20 per cent of our shares to staff. You would be surprised at the productivity improvement that has resulted, and quality control has improved beyond all expectations. I dare say that it has made the company one of the most efficient in the region, if not the most efficient in the country. That is the sort of innovation that we need from the Minister when he looks at ACTION buses - not just one thing, but a multiplicity of things. It can be done; but one has to be daring, one has to be innovative, and, most of all, one has to share trust with one's employees. Come on, Minister, be daring; give it a go. That is how problems are solved and new deals are created.
Madam Speaker, throughout Australia the trend is to provide clean, safe, reliable, efficient and cost-effective public transport. Let us pause for a minute to compare other systems which are operating successfully in some of our major cities throughout Australia. For instance, the Western Australian Government recently announced plans to corporatise, over a three-year period, its public transport network, TransPerth, and to open it up to public and private operators of the metropolitan transport services - something that Mr Brown did in Victoria with the MET buses. In Victoria, corporatisation of the public transport corporation is in progress. A framework has been established to enable savings of $245m per year to be achieved by the year 1995. By 1996 the total cumulative savings spelt out in real dollars means an average saving of about $429 per Victorian household. This is being achieved through the contracting out of buses to bus operators, such as the National Bus Co. and, as I said, the MET. The union, in conjunction with the Government, has created a new company that runs the MET buses as a private enterprise business. The contracting out of bus services places the onus fairly and squarely on the bus operators to provide a service that customers want and to service more passengers.
In New South Wales the State Transit Authority operates government bus and ferry services in defined areas of Sydney and Newcastle. In recent years the Government funding rationale for State Transit has been substantially revised and has brought about substantial changes in operating conditions. The State Transit Authority will receive approximately $163.8m in government funding. That is for a city of four million people. Compare that with the $50m for a city of 300,000. This was a reduction from $237m the previous year. Over the past five years subsidy payments to the State Transit Authority have fallen significantly - in real terms, by $75m per annum.
In South Australia and Tasmania, the transport authorities are doing similar things. In Queensland the State run rail system will be corporatised by June 1995. Let us look at our cousins in New Zealand. They are just getting it right and they are way ahead of us. With a population of just under four million, for the current financial year the overall subsidy by the New Zealand Government for its public transport system, which includes trains, buses and ferries, is $102m, as against $50m for the ACT with 300,000 people.
Apart from peak-hour times, ACTION buses during the day would probably carry only a handful of people. During the late hours of the evening you are lucky if you spy even one passenger on ACTION buses. The introduction of mini-buses in cities and towns throughout Britain and Europe has become an integral part of the transport system, and in most cases government run systems are rapidly being replaced. I would recommend some innovative ideas to the Minister, as I have previously outlined.
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