Page 3437 - Week 08 - Thursday, 23 August 2012
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The Assembly voted—
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Ayes 17 |
Noes 0 | ||
|
Mr Barr |
Mr Hanson | ||
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Dr Bourke |
Mr Hargreaves | ||
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Ms Bresnan |
Ms Hunter | ||
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Ms Burch |
Ms Le Couteur | ||
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Mr Coe |
Ms Porter | ||
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Mr Corbell |
Mr Rattenbury | ||
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Mr Doszpot |
Mr Seselja | ||
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Mrs Dunne |
Mr Smyth | ||
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Ms Gallagher | |||
Question so resolved in the affirmative.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Proposed expenditure—Part 1.6—Territory and Municipal Services Directorate—$291,511,000 (net cost of outputs) and $266,508,000 (capital injection), totalling $558,019,000.
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: The time limit for this is 60 minutes.
MR COE (Ginninderra) (5.35): Of course, like almost every area of government, the Territory and Municipal Services Directorate provides essential services for the people of Canberra. I hope when the crossbench address this they spend as much time addressing the TAMS directorate as they can rather than having a go at the opposition, which is what they are doing so much these days. It is always interesting when the Greens accuse the Liberals of being negative when the very premise of their party is one of doom and gloom and apocalypse, but never mind.
The TAMS directorate has a huge budget, but I think it is fair to say that there are many areas of the budget where the money can be spent better. Of course, the best example of that, I believe, is the ACTION network, a network which cost $123 million in 2011-12. That excludes the Treasurer’s advance which was released today for the final quarter of 2011-12. Of that $123 million as listed in the budget, $101 million comes from a direct government subsidy. It costs taxpayers $101 million per year to fund ACTION buses, whether they ride the bus or not. That is $690 per household. That is an astronomical amount of money.
When you look at the patronage levels and you think of the services they provide, I do not think we are getting an appropriate return on our investment. That is something Mr Stanhope admitted on quite a few occasions when he was the Minister for Territory and Municipal Services responsible for transport. He would say there had to be reforms, changes and massive improvements to fix the network and get patronage to a critical level. However, not he nor Mr Hargreaves nor Ms Gallagher nor Minister Corbell had the guts or perhaps the capability to actually make those tough decisions
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