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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (24 May) . . Page.. 1664 ..

MR HARGREAVES: Mr Speaker, I ask a supplementary question. A second appropriation bill was tabled yesterday to supplement ACTION's $7.724 million blow-out. Is this not a sign that your new network reforms are not working, that the people have rejected the zone system? It is really an admission that you have no idea how to entice people onto public transport.

MR SMYTH: Mr Speaker, this is not true. There is growth in the number of people that are using ACTION. We have the figures to prove it. But they are using it perhaps too wisely because they have gone out after the periodic tickets to get a cheaper fare. These fares are determined by IPC. IPC gives us a direction on what fares we can charge and the framework in which it survives. The independent pricing commissioner himself has said that the discounts are too generous and we should be looking at the way in which we deliver fares in the ACT. That is one of the issues. The second issue is the unanticipated blow-out in fuel costs. The third issue relates to some legal costs that have come forward much earlier than expected.

We have not achieved all the savings in the network. We will continue to make sure that we get the sort of efficiency out of the transport system that the people of Canberra deserve, and at the same time we will continue to provide that service.

MS TUCKER: My question to the Treasurer relates to the budget. Treasurer, Budget Paper No. 3, page 40, states that the 2000-2001 budget includes a so-called dividend to the community of $103 million. The paper says:

The budget paper then goes on to list some 80 budget initiatives worth $77 million and six items of capital expenditure worth $26 million, which add up to $103 million. However, the budget also says that total expenses of $1,892 million are up only some $33 million on the forecast outcomes for 1999-2000. If it is true that $103 million is additional expenditure in the budget, where is the rest of the money coming from on top of the $33 million to pay for these initiatives?

MR HUMPHRIES: I thank Ms Tucker for that question. It does not say that the $103 million is additional spending above previous years. It says it is additional investments made into the community in the 2000-2001 budget. Obviously the flavour of those initiatives in the following three pages of a recurrent and capital nature is about the sorts of things we have spoken about with respect to the social capital budget. I should make the point very clear for Ms Tucker's benefit because I have been asked about this by a journalist: we are not pretending that the full extent of our direction of funding towards social capital is restricted to the $3.5 million in this year's budget under Building Social Capital. In fact, we tried to address a much broader agenda of building social capital in our community through the initiatives which are listed on pages 41 to 43 of this budget.

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