Page 2741 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 June 2011
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do for SIDS and Kids. I wonder what $7 million would do for so many other organisations around town.
This government is unwilling to make the tough decisions when it comes to the ACTION network. Because of that, the costs of ACTION keep going up and up and up. Yet we are not seeing an uptake of their services commensurate with that increase in costs. That is why we are seeing the user charge to the ACT government—that is, in effect, the subsidy—going from $74.6 million to $80.9 million next year. That is a subsidy of nearly $81 million simply for eight per cent of Canberrans to use that service. Only eight per cent of Canberrans are getting on ACTION buses, yet we are spending $80.9 million.
A real government would ask how they can make that $80.9 million go further, how they can reduce that so they have more money to put into other areas of government, or how they can return it to taxpayers in the form of tax cuts or cuts to other fees and charges. Instead, this government do not want to make those tough decisions. They are quite content to continue to measure ACTION buses on inputs rather than outputs. They are quite content to simply say, “We’re spending $100 million on ACTION; therefore it’s a good network. Let us measure it on outputs; let us measure it on how many new people are actually getting on buses; let us measure it on how effective the operation is rather than on simply how much money you are spending.”
There is no greater demonstration of just how inefficient and how ineffective it has been than the debacle of the MyWay ticketing system. For years there has been a need for a new ticketing system on ACTION buses, and for years this government, as I said earlier, has been dragging the chain. For years this government was incapable, it seems, of rolling out a network of new ticketing machines across the ACTION fleet, even though the ticketing system for ACTION would have to be one of the simplest in the world. It is a single modal system and a single zonal system. It should, in effect, be an off-the-shelf ticketing system. Instead, we had delay after delay after delay and the cost of it went up and up and up. Suddenly we had an $8 million ticketing system that was running years late.
As a result of it running years late, they could do a lot of scenario planning and contingency planning, but, in spite of that, we still have problem after problem. We have this debacle regarding the tag on, tag off system. It seems the government have heard the concerns the Liberal Party have been raising for a long time now and have agreed to delay the tag off for another six months. In actual fact, I would not be surprised if they delay it indefinitely, because it simply does not need to be there.
Whilst tagging off is useful in terms of compiling data, which is very important for route plans, we do not need to have 100 per cent compliance to get a good idea of what the travelling public are doing. (Second speaking period taken.) The tagging off regime that was in place drove up the cost of catching a bus for people who absent mindedly or for one reason or another did not tag off. They were fined, in effect. They were penalised because of an antiquated requirement that was not needed for the fare policy or the zonal requirements, given we have a single zone. I am glad the government has listened to the concerns of the community and listened to the concerns of the Canberra Liberals and finally backed down from this.
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