Page 588 - Week 02 - Thursday, 9 March 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
As Mr Gentleman said, ACTION is the primary provider, and we cannot do anything that would change that, irrespective of the community benefit. If there were real competition in this place and someone could do the job better, we would have to be lumbered with ACTION irrespective of how inefficient it is. At the moment ACTION is providing a gradually improving service, but it has a long way to go. But, if there is no competition on routes, that service will not improve markedly.
Let us just take another example of where competition has made a difference. Fifteen years ago there was one telecommunications provider in this country and what we saw was the same tired old service—and it was expensive. We had the entry of other organisations to provide service in the telecommunications area, and what did we see? A radical drop in prices and a diversification of services. That happened because Telecom, as it was then known, and then Telstra were not completely and utterly quarantined from competition. But we will never see that improvement in the quality of public transport in this city while the people on that side ensure that the primary provider continues in its monopoly state. This is a monopoly on public transport, which, if Dr Foskey’s amendment does not succeed, will continue, to the detriment of public transport in the ACT.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Minister for Health and Minister for Planning) (5.17): I want to speak in support of the government’s position on this amendment. Some of the arguments we have heard from Mrs Dunne—and, unfortunately, even from Dr Foskey—have been very unfortunate, because they do not demonstrate a fundamental understanding of the way public transport works in any city, let alone in Canberra.
This amendment fails to demonstrate that the public transport provider is already, obviously, heavily reliant on public sector funding, and that is the case in any city. Public transport does not operate at a profit. What is important in providing public transport is that, to the extent that it is able to draw revenue from patronage, we do not want to create a situation where the private sector is allowed to come in and cherry pick the profitable routes, leaving the public transport provider to be the provider of last resort for the low-volume, undesirable routes that no private sector provider will operate on. That is why the government does not support an amendment that allows for discretion in this matter.
There should not be discretion in this matter because, otherwise, it will be open to a future minister—I do not believe any Labor minister would act in such a way, but I am not so confident about a future Liberal minister—to act in a way that is detrimental to public transport provision. For that reason, there should be no disadvantage to the existing public sector operator, and that is why we do not support the proposal put forward by Dr Foskey, which provides for that discretion, which is dangerous in terms of the long-term viability of public transport provision in this city in a comprehensive way.
Mrs Dunne made some interesting assertions about pandering to the TWU. I am quite amazed by those comments, but it is the sort of paranoid conspiracy theory you get from Mrs Dunne and indeed from those opposite. I imagine that at some time in the future there will be a light rail network in this city, and I know one thing: its drivers will be TWU members.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .