House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, First Session (53-1)
2014-10-30 Daily Xml

Contents

Public Transport Levy

Mr WINGARD (Mitchell) (14:57): Supplementary, sir: given that the government has budgeted to receive $1.7 million this year, and around $4 million in the years after, from the transport levy, can the minister tell the house what other events will have this levy imposed, given that there is a budgeted figure?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, Minister Assisting the Minister for Planning, Minister Assisting the Minister for Housing and Urban Development) (14:58): That's a good question. As we discussed both after the release of the Treasurer's budget and also during estimates, these costs will be recovered from commercial events where more than 5,000 people attend. We estimate that there will be many of those events, for example, in the next financial year.

The regime is that there will be a six-month period before the event is hosted at which time a venue manager—the actual host of the location of the event—will need to talk to the transport department about the nature of the event, how many people are anticipated to come along to the event and the manner in which they are anticipated to come. For example, will a lot of people seek to arrive at a particular point in time or will they get there very gradually? Perhaps a good example of that is the difference between the beginning of an AFL game, where a lot of people will want to arrive in a relatively short period of time, compared to, say for example, how people may travel along to an Ashes test game, where the number of people travelling to the oval may occur over a longer period.

We will have those discussions with the venue managers and, of course, with the people who are actually organising the event or participating in the event, work out what those requirements are, work out how we might provide public transport to facilitate those movements both to and from those events, have a look at what public transport would be scheduled to be provided to that part of the city and whether they would be sufficient or not, or indeed whether we might need to bring on additional services. Then, of course, there would be a discussion about whether those services would most desirably be paid services or whether they would be free services. Once we have gone through all of those decisions, we will be able to arrive at a figure for those events.

Of course, once we have all of the events that we are anticipating over the course of a financial year which, at the beginning of a financial year is difficult, given that there is only the requirement for six months, we will be able to make an estimate. I should also make clear that, of course, the legislation provides for a discretion for me as minister to work out how best those costs are recovered from the venue manager.

Mr WINGARD: Supplementary, sir.

The SPEAKER: Well, that would be a fourth supplementary, member for Elder.

Mr WINGARD: Was the last one not a question, sir?

The SPEAKER: We will come back to you.