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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 7 Hansard (23 September) . . Page.. 2095 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

You only have to look at the substantive information which the union has provided to the Government on this issue. Five pages of substantive points regarding the ACTION enterprise bargaining agreement were put forward by the union. If that is not a firm offer, Minister, what is? The fact is that you have been caught out. It is no surprise that the colour in your face is rising, Minister. You have been caught out on this matter.

Let us understand what public transport in this city should be all about. Public transport in this city should be about providing opportunities for people who, for one reason or another, cannot use their own private motor vehicle or other forms of transport to get around the place in which we live. Most importantly, it is about ensuring that the most underprivileged in our community have that opportunity - people who are unemployed, young people, students, elderly people, pensioners and disabled people. The most vulnerable in our community must have an efficient and effective public transport network. It has been demonstrated time and again that you cannot achieve that outcome by the privatisation of a public transport system, because privatisation goes against the very ethos of what public transport is all about.

Public transport is not about making money. Public transport is not about making a profit. Public transport is a public good. I challenge anyone to stand up in this place and say that public transport should not be a public good. It is a public good. It is something which binds the community together and allows all citizens, regardless of their income, regardless of their social status, to be effective citizens, to move about the city in which they live and to participate in the life of that city. Clearly, this Government has other ideas.

As my colleague Mr Berry pointed out in the debate this morning, as early as 1995 this Liberal Government had an agenda to contract out and then privatise ACTION's operations. They have not refuted that. They cannot, because it is true. They have not for a moment denied that that was always on their agenda.

It is interesting that during this whole debate we have not heard about Tony De Domenico. Remember when Tony De Domenico was the Minister for Urban Services from 1995 until the beginning of 1997? He was responsible for buses. I have been able to draw on some information in the Graham report, the report that the Minister himself endorses as an acceptable and very professional document and which the Assembly overall has endorsed also, with the exception of some of its recommendations in relation to zonal fares.

Mr Speaker, it is interesting to look at route patronage comparisons and to look at how patronage declined during the period after the Liberals first gained office. Between 1995 and 1997 commuter express patronage declined from 25,600 to 23,627, a drop of 7.7 per cent. Patronage on route 333, the intertown route, declined from 321,160 to 287,775, a drop of 10.4 per cent. Finally, patronage on standard route services declined from 1,140,050 to 993,400, a decline of 12.4 per cent, or 141,650 boardings. Mr Speaker, if there is a clear indication about how this Government has treated public transport, then it is in those figures. Those figures clearly demonstrate reductions of between 7 and 12 per cent in ACTION boardings during the first two years of the Carnell Government.

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