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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (18 June) . . Page.. 1731 ..

Mrs Carnell: Shock, horror!

MR WHITECROSS: Mrs Carnell confirms my suspicions when she says "Shock, horror!". She wants to have private operators operating in the ACT. This is the first of many such services. Next she will be saying that, since they are picking up passengers in Kingston, they might as well go around the suburb, and they might as well go into Griffith and Narrabundah and Red Hill as well, on the way to Woden. It is a Trojan horse.

At the end of this trial, what are they going to say? Are they going to say, "They picked up two passengers. It was not doing any harm, so we decided to continue it."? What are the crossbenchers going to do then? Are they going to say, "That sounds fair enough to us."? When the Government says, "Now we want to take it through Narrabundah and Griffith and Red Hill", are they going to say, "We will have a trial of that, too, and maybe we can cancel a couple of ACTION bus services along the way. After all, Deane's will be picking up the passengers and there will not be any need for the ACTION routes anymore."?

The Independents and the Greens have been conned here by the Government. They have not produced a skerrick of evidence that there is a demand for this service. They have not thought about where the Government is trying to take them with this proposal. Instead, they have been hoodwinked by the Government saying, "It is just a trial", like 4.00 am closing was just a trial. We should not allow the Government to hoodwink us into allowing a private operator to start operating on a route when the Government has not produced a skerrick of argument, a skerrick of evidence, that there is a demand for the service, that the service is necessary. If they do have evidence of the demand, let them produce it and let them explain why an ACTION bus service could not meet that demand.

The whole basis on which the Government has been arguing is a fiction - that there are passengers waiting to catch the bus at the bus stop but Deane's drives past them. Those passengers simply do not exist. There are no passengers waiting on the side of the road to catch the bus, because there is no service to wait for. The message Mrs Carnell gave that Deane's were going to pick up the passengers half an hour earlier than ACTION would have is just not true, because there is no ACTION service. Mr Gilmour said it in the paper. Mrs Carnell does not even understand her own trial.

The reality is that Mrs Carnell has confirmed in her interjection today that they want private operators operating in competition with ACTION. That is the truth, and before the Greens and the Independents start down that slippery slope they ought to be considering what that will mean for public transport. In every city where they have had multiple transport operators - private operators operating alongside public operators - it has always ended the same way. It has always ended in timetables clashing, services not matching, distorted fare structures, and all sorts of other inconvenience for the commuters. We have had enough inconvenience to commuters from the Liberals. We do not need any more.

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