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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (12 November) . . Page.. 4004 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

(3) calls for immediate action by the Government to implement the Graham Report in order to address the crisis of confidence in Canberra's public transport system.

We have that, on the one hand, and then we have a very sensible amendment from Ms Horodny, on the other hand, to insert a new paragraph that puts it in perspective - that we also condemn "the degrading of Canberra's public transport system by the previous Labor Government which cut ACTION's budget by $10m over three years". So the idea is that we condemn the Liberals and we condemn Labor. I am in on that, and appropriately so.

Mr Whitecross: Needless to say, Michael.

MR MOORE: I accept that this is Mr Whitecross's motion and I recognise that he was not in that Labor Government at the time that the budgets were cut. Ms Horodny also moved a very sensible amendment to add the following words:

calls on the Government to develop a transport strategy to increase the proportion of travel in Canberra undertaken by public transport.

The confusion, I think, is that there are two issues. One of them is about cutting funding and the other is about increased patronage, increased use and increased efficiency in the public transport system. It is possible to cut funding and still have an even more efficient and better public transport service because, as I think everybody here would recognise, there have been some work practices operating in public transport which have made for a very inefficient system. So it is possible to make significant cuts to the costs associated with public transport. The real question then is what happens to the money when you have made those efficiencies.

The two areas are being confused and I do not think they are mutually exclusive. When this money was saved - the $12m over the last three years and the $10m over the three years before that; $22m in all - what happened to the money? The concern we have here, I think, is that the money has not gone back to making public transport much more efficient and much more effective. We have heard speaker after speaker here today saying, "We can deal with public transport issues in a far more effective way". Mr Corbell, in particular, was talking about public transport coming from Gungahlin. There is no doubt that we have to have a more effective system of public transport coming from Gungahlin, just as we need to ensure that we have a more effective public transport system coming from Belconnen and Tuggeranong, and going to those places, as well as in Central Canberra.

The issue that comes with this is the whole idea of providing disincentives for people to use their motor vehicles. I would argue that what we ought to be doing is ensuring not so much disincentives, although some of those can be applied, but, rather, a decent competitive system. If you can get into Civic, for example, from Gungahlin on an efficient direct line bus service or other direct form of transport very quickly and cheaply, then why bother using your car? Why bother using your car when there is a more efficient and better system operating? That is what we should be aiming at in terms of public transport.

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