Page 2768 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 23 June 2009
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From 1 July we will see a rise in parking machine fees by 20 per cent. From 1 July we will see rises in parking meter fees of 50 per cent. When you visit the tip to get rid of your rubbish you will see a 25 per cent increase in fees. We will see rates increase by 3.7 per cent—well above and beyond the inflation rate. It is very hard to justify all these expenses to the average person when, really, the services are getting worse, not better.
I want to go now to ACTION. ACTION is a pretty special operation for most Canberrans. It runs with a $70-odd million subsidy and, as the Minister for Planning said in the estimates committee, it is probably the most subsidised bus system in the country. It probably is; I wish I knew. I put the question on notice, but that was commercial-in-confidence so they could not actually give me the answer. It would be nice to actually know. I will have to assume that that cabinet member over there has seen the commercial-in-confidence information and that what he is saying is based on that information. Therefore, I will take you to the gospel that it is the most subsidised bus system in the country. The $70 million that the ACT government is pumping into it is, in fact, the highest on a per capita basis. With that in mind, if we are pumping so much money into ACTION, I think it is pretty important that we are making sure we are getting good bang for our buck from that $70 million.
Going to some of the specifics of ACTION, let us look at the timeliness indicators. ACTION’s timeliness is of real concern to many people, and I think my office would probably get the most complaints about the government when it comes to ACTION timeliness. As I said earlier today, when they were setting the budget they set as a target a timeliness measure of 99.8 per cent. However, when they actually measured the timeliness, they used a different measuring tool, a different indicator. Only when I put in a question on notice to the Chief Minister, the Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, did he actually say, “In retrospect, we made a mistake.”
Well, it is pretty disappointing that an operation of around $100 million makes a mistake as obvious as using a different performance indicator from the one set out in the budget. Whatever way you look at this matter, ACTION bus services are not running on time. The very best figure that ACTION can actually publish is 83 per cent, but even that figure is very much a stab in the dark. What it actually means for the average person on the street waiting at the bus stop is that only four out of five buses are going to be on time. One in every five buses is going to be late. To increase fares by an average of 11 per cent when 20 per cent of buses are running late is a disgrace.
The headline figure of 11 per cent for bus fares is not a true indication of the situation. Since 2006 inflation has been of the order of seven per cent, yet for students, when it comes to bus fares, the inflation rate for this year is going to be 49 per cent. The faresaver 10 will go from $8.20 to $12.25. Those opposite laughed when I raised this the other day. They laughed and said, “It is $4. What does it matter? It is only $4.” Well, when you add it up over the course of a year for someone who is getting a bus to and from university, to and from CIT or to or from another tertiary institution, it does, in fact, add up quite significantly. Again, is this increase actually commensurate with an increase in services? No, it definitely is not.
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