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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-06-14 Daily Xml
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BUS TIMETABLES

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg) (15:36): This morning, I, together with other members of parliament, attended a briefing provided by representatives from the department of transport. I thank them for providing that briefing, the purpose of which was to brief members on the new timetabling for bus services in South Australia that are to take place from 1 July 2012. Other matters were also raised, but I will address the former.

The briefing provided information on the major retimetabling of a significant number of bus services and routes across the metropolitan area. This will involve: advertising and radio programs; 600,000 pamphlets are to be sent across to residents; the reprinting of programs; the preparation and installation of notices to go out, not only as regional flyers but also on websites, press advertising, etc. This a significant program.

During that briefing—which, I note, the Minister for Transport Services did not attend; perhaps she should have, given her answers today in question time—I specifically asked what the cost would be for the retimetabling and the subsequent reprinting, advertising, and the like, given that Mr Rod Hook had previously advised that one of the reasons why they had not progressed with the retimetabling arrangements, notwithstanding the pain out in the community, was that it was very expensive to do so, and would cost $2 million to $3 million. Their answer was $3 million; fine.

I also asked what would be the recurrent cost that had to be paid to the bus contractors for the purposes of providing the extra time and services under the new retimetabling arrangement. The answer was $2.6 million. We were also all advised that there would be a number of extra buses, and when asked about how many buses would be leased from the bus contractors, we were advised there were some 12. The advisers this morning could not tell us how much it would cost to pay the contractors to actually lease their buses in order to operate their services.

What the minister has done today is come in and say, 'This whole exercise is going to cost $3 million. $2.6 million is for the bus operators and the difference is what we are paying on leases.' Hello, minister: the reality is there is another massive cost that has been disclosed to us this morning of $3 million to redo this whole exercise and clean up the mess. They also advised us—so the minister is aware—that they are going to do a quarterly review of this, and I am pleased to hear that. I hope that remedies the situation.

When they are reprinting the pamphlets, paraphernalia and propaganda that they perpetuate, let me ask them to do one other thing. My grandmother used to tell me how she wrote in a little book the little proverbs and gems of wisdom that would be printed on the back of bus tickets and she would keep them, because this was an important little service that was provided. So, after decades, we now have a new regime and we find that, on the new bus tickets that are issued, instead of the little signs which say things like, 'Do good and fear nobody: do ill and fear everyone' and 'Every ending is a new beginning', we have some new material. What gets printed on the back of bus tickets now are things like, 'New trains, trams and buses are coming faster, more frequent, greener' and 'An extra 100 brand new buses have entered service since 2008.' So we have all the government's propaganda now on the back of the tickets.

But here is an absolute pearler. As it turns out, the ticket I purchased to go on a bus trip recently says, 'Electric trains are coming on track in 2013.' Well, Mr Deputy Speaker, not in Gawler. So, when the department tells me this morning that they are going to be reprinting a number of programs for the timetabling, I certainly hope they are going to attend to this with the new ticketing system that we are going to have and that we get rid of this nonsense, which is clearly no longer applicable, given that the budget disposes of that poor program and it is relegated to some distant future, if we ever see it at all. So, in relation to the electric trains, bad luck for the people of Gawler.

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