Page 587 - Week 02 - Thursday, 9 March 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
upset the Canberra community, making ACTION a less viable option for the government to maintain and therefore easier to sell.
This is not a scary concept for the current government as we are opposed to Dr Foskey’s amendment. But if by some stroke of luck the opposition regains government, then we would be worried. If we agreed to the amendment proposed by Dr Foskey today, it could destabilise the current public transport provider and leave the way clear for misinterpretation and the introduction of unnecessary competition. This would certainly mean the loss of jobs in ACTION. With this in mind, the government will not be agreeing to the amendment.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (5.12): Once again, what we hear from Mr Gentleman is a mindless apologia for the Transport Workers Union, with no comprehension at all about what demand-responsive public transport is all about. It is about responding to demand, Mr Gentleman, and if there is demand out there someone should respond to it. What we have here is a proposal that says, “At all costs we will quarantine ACTION from any competition, irrespective of whether or not they are meeting demand.” This is a fundamental failure on the part of Mr Gentleman and his cronies, whose only operation in this place seems to be to stand up for the TWU at the expense of good public transport policy in the ACT.
This is why we are tinkering around with a daft idea for a busway when all the research that Mr Corbell commissioned in the KBR report points to the fact that we should go for a light rail system. All the figures stack up: we would be better in the long run. But no, why do we not have a light rail system that has been proposed here, and instead a bus system? It is because the bus system is run by ACTION, and it is about storing up brownie points with the TWU. If we have a light rail system, there will be less rolling stock, fewer drivers, much, much less maintenance and fewer people per piece of rolling stock, per passenger kilometre, being employed in the transport system.
What we have here today is the beginning of an approach that should meet the demands of people in the ACT for public transport, but it will falter at the first hurdle because I suspect that Mr Hargreaves has been nobbled in cabinet by the left of the cabinet and the left of the party room saying, “No, no, no, we can’t do that because we will upset our mates in the TWU.” But what we are doing is institutionalising protection from competition.
Mr Gentleman said that the current transport system in the ACT is fair and equitable. But, if it were fair and equitable, we would be having a whole lot more patronage. We would not be dealing with the issues that Dr Foskey rightly pointed out—that people who live on the periphery and who work non-standard hours have to resort to their own private vehicles because there is no reasonable public transport. Children who are working their way through university, people who are trying to enter the job market and people who work in hospitality must have a car. Young kids must have a car to work in hospitality. Many people in this town get their first job working in hospitality, but you cannot finish a shift at 10 or 11 at night or two or three in the morning and get a bus home. And, even if you could get a bus home, under the current route structure it would take you hours—and you do not do it. That is why we need to find a system that is demand responsive.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .