BUS TIMETABLES

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg) (15:40): To use the words of a great Labor luminary, well may we say God save the Queen because nothing will save the Minister for Transport Services. Today, we had the extraordinary situation where the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure came into the house and acknowledged a statement made yesterday about public transport, in particular, whether it was the responsibility of the government or bus contractors for bus services and timetabling, and said that the Minister for Transport Services was right and, in fact, it was the government's responsibility.

Talk about throw a bucket—not a lifeline—all over her, because all that does is confirm that when these contracts were signed the government was responsible, as the minister has confirmed today, for the setting of those timetables which provide the threshold of obligation of the bus providers in those services. There is no benefit to us or any of those commuters in South Australia for the minister for transport to come in today and wax on about the hundreds of thousands of people who use public transport in this state only to find that, in fact, we have—on her own documented records—an utter failure. Her statement, even today, was, 'but there is no doubt that the reliability of bus services can be improved significantly and timetables should be changed to reflect actual running times'.

Well, hello! Well done, minister! You have finally realised that there has been a complete stuff-up on this and not only have thousands of bus commuters out there travelling each day to appointments, to their work, to take their children to school and the like, been inconvenienced but there has also been a shocking amount of money wasted as a result of the inadequate, inaccessible and now unaffordable bus services we have in this state.

What is the government's response when, clearly, they are the ones who have failed? They come out and say, 'We will tell those bus contractors to get it right. We will tell them to get on with the job and make sure this is done properly.' When we ask, 'What about the fines? What about the penalties under your contracts that you have an obligation to perform?', they trot out a $14,500 fine—a pathetic amount—against Transfield for their contract failures. They implement a totally inadequate fine, and what do they say in response to that being exposed? The minister says, 'We have written to them and demanded written undertakings that they are going to be good. They are all going to be good and get the buses on time and they are going to be nice to the consumers and it is all going to be a happy world in public transport land again.' What a joke!

The reality is that we have an inadequate fine and, quite clearly, her own government has acknowledged this and she has been tipped into the deep by the minister for transport. She has to come clean to the people of South Australia and say, 'I was not able to introduce appropriate fines in this situation because...' It has nothing to do with congestion or Clipsal or any of that other nonsense that she has come up with in parliament today: it is because she has failed to implement adequately the obligations in those contracts to make sure that those timetables were properly set and that the consumers get the service that they are paying to have.

That is what has been exposed today, and she must come clean to the people of South Australia and not come in here with this codswallop about buses being caught up in the Clipsal traffic as the reason for a service fundamentally failing the people of South Australia—which they are paying for, not just in the tickets. It is not just being paid for by the consumers using the service but also all those people out there who are subsidising an important public service to this state. She has to get it right or get out of the job and make sure we get Patrick Conlon or someone else who is going to do it properly. Get on with the job, get it right or get out.