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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (17 June) . . Page.. 1669 ..

MS HORODNY (continuing):

for those decisions. It is simply unacceptable. If you are saying that you are accepting every single thing in this review, then I am very pleased that that is happening. We will certainly be keeping a close eye on when you plan to make these changes and making sure that they do take place.

MR KAINE (Minister for Urban Services) (4.20), in reply: Despite the rhetoric, I am pleased that both the Greens and the Opposition clearly support the initiatives recommended in this report because they, like us, want to see a better bus service than we have now. I do not know why the debate became so heated when we all have the same objectives, we all think the recommendations are fantastic and we all are going to cooperate to make sure that they are all put in place and that our bus service becomes a better service. I was a little intrigued by the Greens. Ms Horodny admitted that she had not read the report, but she did say that everything in it we could have found out by asking people before. Since she has not read it, how does she know what is in it and how can she be sure that we would have got the answers by asking people? There is an odd bit of Green logic there; but Lucy and I understand each other, so we will sort that out.

There are one or two points I want to make on what has emerged from the debate. Mr Whitecross attacked us on a number of fronts. One is that we have cut the money, cut the money and cut the money that goes into ACTION. In fact, my recollection is that that cutting of the money was a process that started under the Labor Government. The budgeted funding of ACTION has been reduced by $21.5m since 1991-92. Most of that reduction was made during the five years of Labor Party government. It is a bit rich for them to come in here now and say, "You cut the money so that the buses are no longer effective", when they themselves cut the greater part of that $21m out of the budget.

Mr Whitecross, as he so often does, misquoted me. He quoted me as saying that most of the hard decisions will take over a year to implement. I did not say that. I did not talk about hard decisions. I said that most of the recommendations would be put in place in this year, but one or two of them, clearly, are going to take longer because they are very complex issues. Revising the network and doing a proper and comprehensive review of the fare structure to come up with an equitable system of fares are not things that you do overnight. The Labor Party might do them overnight in order to get a quick buck, but that is not something that responsible managers do. Most of the recommendations contained in this report, in my view, will have been implemented long before the next election; but there are one or two that cannot be.

Mr Whitecross said, "Patronage is down. You cannot get people on the buses". In fact, patronage is up again. It did dip in November-December, but it is back up again. If Mr Whitecross bothered to keep abreast of what was going on, he would know that the patronage figures have risen again. The bottom line, however, is that one of the five things that were brought out in this report as requiring attention is restrictive work practices. These have certainly been inherited from Labor's day. None of them have been put in place under Liberal governments and none of them would be. I notice that Mr Whitecross supports the workplace reforms that are suggested in the report. I am delighted that we have the unequivocal support of the Labor Party to get rid of those restrictive labour practices from ACTION.

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