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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 8 Hansard (9 August) . . Page.. 2747 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

Ms Tucker alluded to the fact that it needs to be a public transport system which encourages people out of their cars and onto the buses and onto bikes and all those sorts of things, and we concur with that. It needs revamping, and we believe that. I am not making any detrimental comments about the current people in the Department of Urban Services at all, but it could do with people on a board not dissimilar to the health authority board which existed in the past which had experts in the field who were constantly in the field and who guided the services. It is interesting that when the original health board was abolished the Canberra Hospital took a nosedive and a creation of another board in its place was too late. It was a terminal case.

Mr Speaker, the Labor Party is supporting the distinction of ACTION as a statutory authority because it creates an entity within the system. A corporation is totally divorced from that system. It takes ACTION out of being a subset of the department. It is still responsible to this Assembly through the annual reports and through the minister, but the minister does not have the political interference rights that he has when it is a subset of the department. Neither, I might say, does it have the abrogation possibility of territory owned corporations like it does at the moment. We notice that as a shareholder of Totalcare, the current shareholders just abrogated their responsibilities and tried to flog it off. That cannot happen with a statutory authority. A statutory authority takes it out of the meddling hands of the minister and puts it in the hands of professionals.

Mr Osborne says he is worried about what happens at the end of five years. We are all worried about what happens at the end of five years. The reality today is everything exists on a contract arrangement. Every single part of service delivery of this government and this public service is on a purchaser provider contract basis and that is the end of it. So the best you can have is a fairly lengthy contract. ACTION would have a contract whether or not it was a statutory authority or not. Having a five-year contract is as good as you can get at the moment. It is our preference that ACTION would be enshrined as the public passenger system, but if the next best option is to have a five-year contract we are going to grab it.

Mr Osborne: They offered them eight years a couple of years ago.

MR HARGREAVES: They also offered them nothing a couple of years ago when they were put up for tender. You can go and talk to those mechanics and drivers who lost their jobs in the process. They had to find them $10 million. That is not what I call a safety net. You are sitting hear and saying, "Let's keep it the way it is," and there are people who have gone. There are people who have lost their jobs under the current system.

Mr Osborne: Well, why can't they offer them that now? Why can't they give them five-year contracts now?

MR HARGREAVES: Mr Speaker, I am not going to engage in this piece of political hysteria.

MR SPEAKER: Not only will you not engage in it; you shall not.

MR HARGREAVES: I shall not.

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