Page 5179 - Week 12 - Thursday, 27 October 2011
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pouring $100 million in. It makes you think that surely there is a better way for this government to invest that $100 million when it comes to public transport.
But it seems this government is totally unwilling to accept failure. That is exactly what has happened when it comes to this government’s track record on the bus network. For 10 years they have been telling us all how they have fixed public transport or the silver bullet is just around the corner. Yet we are at about eight per cent patronage for the ACTION bus network—$80 million a year subsidy for eight per cent of Canberrans to use it.
I reckon, and I have said so in this place before, that the vast majority of those eight per cent are using ACTION buses because they have to, not because they want to, but because their financial or physical circumstances are such that they are unable to drive their own vehicles. Catching a bus is not the first preference for many people in Canberra, I do not think, as ACTION currently operates as a network. It is a shame. I think everyone here would like to see a bus network that truly was something that you would want to hop on. I think everyone would like to see a bus network that truly did cater for the needs of our city. Instead, we do not have that.
Sure, the inner town services are reasonable. I do not think you get too many complaints when you are talking about getting a bus from Belconnen to the city, the city to Woden or Woden to Tuggeranong. However, the vast majority of Canberrans do not live around those town centres. To that end, they need to get a connecting bus. And it is with those connecting buses that the problems lie.
A couple of years ago, in 2009, the government pointed to Redex as if it was the answer to all our problems. That was, after all, just a rebranded No 5 service. What they failed to acknowledge was that very few people live in the Gungahlin town centre and you have to get a bus to the Gungahlin town centre. As soon as you try to link up the Redex service, which is now the 200, to route Nos 51, 52, 56 or 5, it gets pretty problematic. And it just shows that for all the buzz words like “integrated”, which they keep using—“integrated public transport network”—it never actually happens. There is a reason why there is a Yes, Minister episode about this integrated public transport network, because it is hard. Yet this government after 10 years have well and truly failed in spite of spending $110 million a year on a network which is simply failing.
It is important to note that the failure is indicated in the figures where there was a shortfall of 265,000 people in the target. They blame this on the ticket machine. But the ticket machine problems that they have had have been known for years. Yet, in spite of this government having the simplest public transport system in the world, a single-modal system on a single-zone system, they are still unable to roll out an off-the-shelf ticketing system. How is it that they do it in London, with trains underground, light rail, with buses and whatever else they have there across nine zones, and here, one zone, one mode, and we still cannot get it right? It really does ask the question: why is it that it has taken so many years for this government to deliver such a simple ticketing system and why did the cost blow out so much?
In the 2004-05 budget, Mr Corbell came in and said, “We are going to have real-time information.” And what did we hear this year? “We are going to have real-time
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