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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (18 June) . . Page.. 1720 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

But, Mr Speaker, to return to my main point, the Government has taken $12.7m out of ACTION over three years. They have done this, not by improving the efficiency of operations and not by enterprise agreements which have changed work practices, such as the introduction of part-time drivers, which Labor did. They have done it by one simple mechanism, and that is by cutting back the service. We have seen three successive timetables introduced by this Government designed to cut back on the services provided by ACTION to the commuters of Canberra. We have seen them reducing the frequency of services, reducing late night and weekend services, cutting out Nightrider services and cutting back on school bus services. These are the people who promised us free school buses, but they have cut back on the school buses that they actually do run.

Mr Speaker, that has been their record in relation to this - a record of winding down the public transport system. While they have been winding down the public transport system, they have also been hiking the fares by a massive 50 per cent over three years. The Chief Minister, who went to the last election saying, "Not one cent more", has managed to get away with increasing fares for ACTION by 50 per cent. So, Mr Speaker, what has been the cumulative effect of those policies? The cumulative effect has been to drive patrons off the buses and to make the buses less attractive. Mr Speaker, they have been pulled up, in this relentless drive towards winding back the public transport system in the ACT, only by their own polling and by the Graham report, which came out and recommended that they reverse all the decisions they had made over the previous 21/2 years; that they increase the frequency of services; and that they introduce more of Labor's style of express services, which bypass interchanges, to get passengers to where they need to go more quickly.

Mr Speaker, the report recommended that they get rid of the holiday timetable that the Liberals have imposed on the community for the last two years, which has created chaos for bus commuters who happen to work over the Christmas holidays and who need the buses to get to work. It recommended that they restore the quality of evening services and weekend services and that they look at running late-night services from nightspots such as those in Civic; for example, the Nightrider service that was previously cut. Mr Speaker, these are all recommendations of the Graham report to reverse the direction of the Liberal Party policy over the last three years. I spoke yesterday about how much I think we should be trusting the Liberals to get that right, given their policy over the last three years.

Mr Speaker, my motive in moving this motion today is to get the Assembly to reaffirm our previous resolution, given the Liberals' record in relation to ACTION buses, a record which we could only anticipate on 31 May 1995. We have now had a further two years to see what their record means in practice. It is a record of cutting back, a record of hiking costs, a record of trying to dismantle the public transport system in Canberra. That record, Mr Speaker, is all the more reason why we need to reaffirm that the Government cannot lease out ACTION services or give approval to other operators to operate regular scheduled services within the ACT because, if they are given an inch, they cannot be trusted not to use it to undermine the public transport system in Canberra. They cannot be trusted not to use it to undermine the recommendations of the Graham report to improve public transport in Canberra.

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