Page 2460 - Week 06 - Thursday, 24 June 2010
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I am sure that we all could put together a wish list of what we would like to do with $161,000 each week for community groups here in Canberra. Instead, this Chief Minister, because he is incapable of showing leadership on this issue, refuses to step up to the TWU, refuses to step up to ACTION management and refuses to actually reform ACTION to make it a better system.
The Chief Minister can try and throw a few jibes across the table, but at the end of the day, by your own press release, Chief Minister, ACTION is costing $31 million too much. That is $31 million. How many Hall schools is that? How many Flynn schools is that? How many Cook schools or Tharwa schools is that? How many Noah’s Ark centres is that? How many migrant youth services are there? How many? How many are there, Chief Minister?
The fact is that you have failed dismally when it comes to leading ACTION. The fact is that the problems with ACTION are so entrenched, so culturally entrenched, that this Chief Minister is incapable of resolving the problem. Whether it be dead running, the safety record, which Mrs Dunne pointed to earlier, or the countless other problems with ACTION, things simply have to change.
The cost per kilometre this year has gone up to $4.13. The total cost per passenger is now up to $6.30. Roughly speaking, the average fare when getting on an ACTION bus, by the government’s own figures, is somewhere in the vicinity of $1.20. Yet it costs $6.30 for the government to run that very service. Every time somebody gets on an ACTION bus and in effect pays over $1.20, the government is throwing in a fiver—throwing in a $5 note for every person that gets on an ACTION bus.
With that sort of subsidy, with that level of service, with that level of money going into this bus system, would you expect that we would have the rubbish bus system that we have? No, you would not. Only 20 per cent of ACTION’s operating budget comes from revenue from passengers. Why is that? Because the vast majority of Canberrans are not prepared to pay. And that is in spite of the 80 per cent subsidy and the $5 per boarding. The vast majority of Canberrans still do not think it is good value for money, in spite of the fact that they are putting in only $1.20 for every $6.30 it actually costs. That is absolutely disgraceful, and it is up to this person here, Mr Stanhope, to step up and to reform it. He has got the powers at his disposal to do something about it; yet he is either unwilling or incapable of actually doing so.
Tomorrow we are going to have a strike. Tomorrow all the buses in Canberra are going to be off the road because the TWU and Mr Stanhope cannot come to an arrangement. This is in spite of the big words that Mr Stanhope put out in a press release in May, saying that ACTION are not good enough. This is in spite of coming from a unionist party where he should be able to have a backroom deal with the TWU. This is in spite of all of that. He still is not capable. It really does smack of a Chief Minister that either does not care or is simply someone who is biding his time, riding out the rest of his term. The problem is just too hard. It is just too hard for the Chief Minister to tackle this issue head on and make a name for himself.
Members interjecting—
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