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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-03-05 Daily Xml
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Public Transport Privatisation

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (14:29): Being to the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure: in the minister's customer service satisfaction inquiry, how many times did they ask whether or not people supported privatisation and what was the response?

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL (Schubert—Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government, Minister for Planning) (14:29): What the survey showed is that people cared—

The Hon. Z.L. Bettison interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Ramsay is on two warnings.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: —not about who is providing the service; they cared about what the level of service was: 'Is the service clean? Is it secure? Does it arrive on time? Does it arrive in a frequency that gets me where I want to go and the time I want to get there?'

Mr Szakacs interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Cheltenham is warned.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: The two things that I find interesting are that I am being asked questions at the moment about a customer service survey that this government undertook. Prior to that survey, there was no customer service information asked for. It is pretty easy to let down your customers when you don't even bother to ask them a question in the first place. We had the guts to actually ask the hard questions because we want to know the answers. Instead of just sticking your head in the sand because you don't want to know what your customers actually want, we are undertaking a people-focused—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Minister, be seated for one moment. The member for Kaurna, it is your turn to leave today for the remainder of question time for being on two warnings and continuing to interject. I ask the minister to try not to provoke members of the opposition.

The honourable member for Kaurna having withdrawn from the chamber:

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: The second thing here is that our bus services have been outsourced for 20 years. We are in the process at the moment of finalising the new contracts in relation to the bus network, which will come into place on 1 July, including with our tram network. What is interesting is that in 2005 those contracts came up.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, members on my left!

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: Were those services brought back into public hands or were they re-outsourced? They were outsourced. In 2011, were those contracts brought back in-house? No. The former government had every opportunity to be able to practise what they now preach and actually bring services back in-house, but they didn't do that.

At the next election, there is going to be a massive contrast between members who want to put our state and our taxpayers at huge financial risk and a government that has actually delivered better services that customers have wanted to use. That will be the contrast, and we are up for the fight—in fact, we are eager for the fight. The customers don't care who is providing the service; they just care how good it is. That is precisely what we are getting on with delivering.

I think that South Australians are the ones who are going to benefit from increased service frequency, from having a system that is more efficient, meaning that we can actually reinvest in services and also answer those questions and deliver on the information that our customers have told us about improving reliability, improving frequency and improving the number of services to ensure that they are less crowded. These are things that we are listening to and what we are getting on with that the moment.

The SPEAKER: If all the noise continues, the member for Morphett and the member for Reynell are going to be leaving.

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