Page 668 - Week 03 - Thursday, 15 March 2007
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adult Canberrans have caught the bus. It is a really significant achievement and it needs to be acknowledged. So in the context of this motion to have an inquiry into ACTION buses let us provide the framework, let us provide the context, in terms of what the government has achieved and continues to achieve.
Let us acknowledge, as we agree to an inquiry into ACTION, that, in the space of three months since the new routes were announced, there has been a seven per cent increase in patronage. In the space of the last three months patronage has increased by seven per cent. The flavour of the debate is that ACTION is a basket case—that these changes, the new measures, have been rejected by the entire travelling public. But they have not. Patronage is up seven per cent in three months.
That is certainly not to deny that the new routes have caused some significant angst, that the government and members in this place have been subjected to significant representations around routes and inconvenience and that the feedback in many regards has been negative. But let us not forget, in the context of some of the disadvantage that some members of the travelling public have suffered, that patronage has increased by seven per cent since the new routes were introduced. So there are a lot of people out there that are not complaining, that are not saying to members of this place that this is all dreadful, this is all awful. There has been an increase of seven per cent. So there are a lot of Canberrans who find the new arrangements satisfactory—not only satisfactory, there are a lot of Canberrans who are happy with the new routes and the new arrangements to the extent that our patronage levels have increased by seven per cent. So we need to acknowledge that; we need to put that in some context.
I know that in his heart Mr Mulcahy at least thinks about some of these issues around efficiencies. Essentially, as we have just heard through the matter of public importance, it is all about efficiencies. It is not about increasing revenue; it is all about extra efficiency. So the facts and the detail which Mr Hargreaves provided earlier would, I am sure, have struck a particular chord with Mr Mulcahy. The new network was introduced on 4 December, so it is just on three months and patronage has increased by seven per cent. In the between-peak period prior to that—and I know this is the sort of stat that goes straight to the heart of Mr Mulcahy’s entire philosophy of life—we were providing enough buses for 8,000 passengers per hour between peaks and we were carrying 2,000 passengers per hour between peaks. We had an excess capacity of 70 per cent. Of course we non-economic rationalists, we progressives, do not dwell on these numbers so much, but I just know that the food for thought—
Mr Mulcahy: It sounds like an award problem there—an EBA problem.
MR STANHOPE: Well, perhaps there is an organisational issue, perhaps there is a governance issue, perhaps there is an issue around long-entrenched conditions of service. But the Mulcahy response in his address did not go to that. The Mulcahy response was: “Well, you’re seeking to address a whole range of issues, and it’s not working, so scrap it and let’s condemn it.” But what Mr Mulcahy did not say, of course, is what Mr Mulcahy would do. What would the Liberals do?
Mr Mulcahy: You need a bit of compassion for the disadvantaged. You don’t let all the disabled and the disadvantaged fall between the cracks.
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