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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-06-16 Daily Xml
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Bus Services

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (14:22): My question is to the Premier. Does the Premier support the bus changes announced by his government on the weekend?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:22): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. We have long considered the poor performance in terms of public transport in South Australia. As the minister has already outlined to the house, when we came to government we inherited a situation in which there were fewer people using our buses in 2018 than there were back in 2010. This was completely unacceptable.

We have set up the South Australian Public Transport Authority. We have looked at international best practice. As the minister outlined, we have spoken with consumers and asked them why they were not using the bus service in South Australia, and now we are putting in place a plan to significantly increase the patronage of our buses in South Australia.

So this is a really important reform. It was a reform that the previous government, of course, as per everything else, kicked under the carpet. They were not prepared to do the hard work to actually address the issues as to why people weren't using public transport in South Australia. We currently have approaching $1 billion worth of expenditure in South Australia on public transport—again, programs that those opposite neglected while they were in government.

We are very proud to be doing the work for the electrification of the Gawler line. This was a project that the previous government promised, took off the table, promised, took off the table. We are fixing that promise that the previous government made. They made plenty of promises with regard to public transport. I seem to remember they were going to electrify the line down to Outer Harbor.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: They were going to electrify the line down to Grange. I have been down there recently—no electrification whatsoever. We are fixing the work that was left to us by the previous government, so I am not taking any lectures whatsoever from those opposite. I would like to commend the minister—

Mr Brown interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Playford is warned.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —for the work that he is doing to bring our public transport up to an acceptable standard, addressing issues like cleanliness, like frequency of service and, importantly, like having mobile phone charging services on our new trains here South Australia. These are the things that people have been asking for. More than that, he has benchmarked international best practice for that first mile, last mile investigation—in fact, experimentation—that we are doing, trials that we are doing at the moment in multiple locations around South Australia. We want to provide a much better service than we inherited from the previous government, and that's precisely what we are rolling out.

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