Additional Comments - Australian Greens
Senator Scott Ludlam, Thursday 20 August 2009
The Australian Greens welcome this report which
clearly makes the case for the inherent value of well funded public transport
services. The document is a valuable and coherent summary of the many reasons
why targeted Commonwealth investment in public and active transport is timely
and essential.
Almost all submissions argued that the Australian
Government should play a much greater role in promoting [5.18] and providing
funding for public transport and active transport [5.23]. In the face of this
evidence, it borders on the bizarre that the report does not make a clear
recommendation in this respect.
The Committee heard evidence that central
governments of nearly all industrialised nations play a significant role in
public transport planning and funding [5.21], and that Australia is the only
OECD country in which the Federal Government does not have a formal role in
funding and supporting public transport.[1]
The Australian Automobile Association and the National
Transport Commission urged the Australian Government to establish an ongoing
funding program for public transport and active transport comparable to its
roads programs [5.18 and 5.35].
Two
previous Parliamentary Committee Reports[2]
have clearly and unequivocally called for federal funding for public transport
and urban mass transit [1.13 and 1.15] and this reflects the more recent
recommendations by Garnaut (2008) and Infrastructure Australia (2008).
The
Government is yet to respond to the previous Parliamentary inquiries; it is
hoped that this report may play some role in focusing Government attention on
the urgent need for a systematic re-prioritising of transport funding.
The
Committee also recognises that building more roads does not alleviate
congestion, but actually encourages growth of traffic and entrenches patterns
of urban development that create high car use [3.11]. Despite this fact, the
Commonwealth continues to fund roads, thus worsening congestion, and refuses to
institutionalise targeted funding for public transport measures that
will alleviate that congestion.
The
report takes a contradictory position in the executive summary and at [5.43],
implying that public transport remain solely the financial and planning
responsibility of the States, while then going on to persuasively argue the case
why this should change.
The report notes that the Committee "agrees that the
demand on public transport infrastructure will continue to rise and require an
expansion" [5.43] however refuses to take the next logical step to
recommend that the Commonwealth allocate any funding for this task.
As such, the Greens propose the following recommendations
replace recommendation 4 in the committee report:
Recommendation
1
The Commonwealth make infrastructure funding
available for public transport, subject to strict merit-based criteria.
Recommendation 2
Proposed
Commonwealth funding for public transport be subject to an objective assessment
of the broad community and economic benefits and the degree to which the
sponsoring state or territory government has adopted an integrated,
inter-modal, best-practice approach to transport planning and management.
Travelsmart
In
recognition that 'Travelsmart' can reduce car use by up to 15 per cent and is
more cost-effective than capital intensive public transport infrastructure
projects, it is strongly recommended that Commonwealth funding of 'Travelsmart'
be continued[3].
Recommendation 3
The
Commonwealth recognise the cost-effectiveness of the 'Travelsmart' behaviour
change program and reinstate its funding, building on the valuable work
undertaken in this programme to date.
Fringe
Benefits Tax
The
Committee's recommendations relating to fringe benefits tax outline sensible
interim measures for assessing the benefits of the way this tax is applied to
cars. However it may be that in the light of the data and policy advice
obtained as a consequence of Recommendation 8 (which queries the purpose of the
tax and the way it is applied), the concessionary tax treatment of cars as a
fringe benefit should be abolished altogether.
Senator
Scott Ludlam
Australian
Greens Senator for Western Australia
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