Page 3568 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 20 November 2007
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replacing an ageing fleet. In his answer to the question he outlined the replacement strategy, and it is “to acquire new buses to meet increasing demand for services”. What kind of strategy is this? That is just a statement of intention. How is that a logical strategy when services have been slashed and patronage has suffered as a result?
Following the rationalisation exercise of 2006 and the destruction of those timetables, we have seen a decline in patronage. In fact, 273 of our 379 buses, or almost 66 per cent of the entire fleet, are 12 years and older. The oldest bus in the ACTION fleet was manufactured between 1985 and 1987. Mr Corbell and Mr Barr would have been still in primary school—perhaps it was not closed—when this bus hit our roads. That is how old these buses are.
I want to point out a couple of matters. In a response to my question on notice on the age of the fleet, I received a table of bus types, quantities and average ages, which clearly indicates that the bus fleet is incredibly aged. It begs the question whether the announcement of that amount of money for 100 new buses over four years is going to plug the yawning gap. Even if it does, the government should be ashamed of misrepresenting this as some sort of initiative to significantly increase our bus fleet capacity. In effect, what has happened here is that the money appropriated is really catch-up money. It is catch-up money to plug gaps in our ageing bus fleet which have existed now for a number of years.
The government has been 20 to 25 per cent behind in maintaining its bus fleet numbers for something like four and a half years. Last week’s announcement is simply catch-up. The government should be ashamed that they are selling that as some significant capacity value-adding exercise. At best, you might be improving your capacity by about 10 per cent. So you spend $75 million to increase capacity by a mere 10 per cent, if you are lucky. The fact is, minister, you have simply spent money to catch up on four and a half years of neglect in terms of maintenance of the bus fleet.
In conclusion, the $75 million thrown at ACTION recently in the second appropriation has done nothing but bring us back to where we were prior to the budget of 2006. It has gone no further in terms of underpinning our public transport with supportive and integrated infrastructure. The Transport Workers Union has even been quoted as referring to this injection of funds as “the government fixing up its own stuff-up”. That is where all this money has been absorbed. There are no new initiatives, no brainwaves here, just the same old rhetoric from a government desperately trying to get in favour with the voting public just in time for an election year.
MR HARGREAVES (Brindabella—Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Housing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (3.48): I make a couple of quick points. Mr Pratt spent 10 or so of his 15 minutes talking about safety on buses. This matter of public importance goes well beyond that, and I think he is fixated on this “hang ’em high and hang ’em long” approach to public safety. He does not acknowledge the relationship we have with the police, he does not recognise the relationship we have with transport supervisors, he does not understand the
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