Transport Legislation Amendment Bill

08-September-2011

Mr CRAIG BAUMANN (Port Stephens—Parliamentary Secretary) [12.02 p.m.]: I support the Transport Legislation Amendment Bill 2011, which will amend the Transport Administration Act 1988 to establish Transport for NSW and the Transport Service, and to make further provision with respect to the administration of public transport in New South Wales; and for other purposes. The object of the bill is to amend the Transport Administration Act 1988 and other transport legislation to establish new arrangements for the administration of the New South Wales transport sector.
These new arrangements provide for the establishment of a statutory corporation to be called Transport for NSW, which will have the central role in the governance of the delivery of transport services and infrastructure by public transport agencies; the establishment of a staff employment entity to be called the Transport Service of New South Wales, in which staff are employed to enable Transport for NSW to exercise its functions; the establishment of a statutory corporation to be called Roads and Maritime Services and the transfer to the new corporation for the functions, assets, rights and liabilities of the Roads and Traffic Authority; the Maritime Authority of New South Wales; and the abolition of the Roads and Traffic Authority, the Maritime Authority of New South Wales, the Transport Construction Authority and the Country Rail Infrastructure Authority.
Proposed section 2B lists common objectives and service delivery priorities of public transport agencies. These highlight the desperate state to which transport has sunk in the last 16 years. These objectives and priorities would seem to be obvious to those on this side of the House who have a real interest in the welfare of the people of New South Wales. The proposed section provides:

(1) Public transport agencies are to exercise their functions in a manner that promotes the following objectives, which are the common objectives of public transport agencies:

(a) Customer focus

To put the customer first and design the transport system around the needs and expectations of the customer.

(b) Economic development

To enable the transport system to support the economic development of the State (with a focus on freight transport systems).

(c) Planning and investment

To ensure that good planning informs investment strategies.

(d) Coherence and integration

To promote coherence and integration across all transport modes and all stages of decision making.

(e) Performance and delivery

To focus on performance and service delivery, based on a strong purchaser-provider model with clear accountabilities for outcomes.
(f) Efficiency

To achieve greater efficiency:
(i) in the delivery of transport infrastructure projects, and

(ii) through improved coordination of freight, maritime and ports operations, and their integration into the transport system, and

(iii) by eliminating duplication of functions and resources, and

(iv) by outsourcing the delivery of non-core services.

(g) Environmental sustainability

To promote the delivery of transport services in an environmentally sustainable manner.

(h) Social benefits

To contribute to the delivery of social benefits for customers, including greater inclusiveness, accessibility and quality of life.
(i) Safety

To provide safe transport services in accordance with a safety regulatory framework.

Those nine common objectives and service delivery priorities should have been adopted 16 years ago. The objectives of Transport for NSW are to plan for a transport system that meets the needs and expectations of the public; to promote economic development and investment; to provide integration at the decision-making level across all public transport modes; to promote greater efficiency in the delivery of transport infrastructure projects; and to promote the safe and reliable delivery of public transport and freight services.

The bill provides for the abolition of four existing transport agencies: the Roads and Traffic Authority, the New South Wales Maritime, the Transport Construction Authority, and the Country Rail Infrastructure Authority. I have had minimal contact with the last two mentioned authorities but being from the Port Stephens electorate—which is known as paradise—and being a boatie, I have always had great service from New South Wales Maritime. Its staff are knowledgeable, courteous and friendly and make water activities throughout New South Wales much more pleasurable and obviously much safer.

I have always had a great relationship with staff at my local motor registries. They are always friendly, even though some of the legislation they work with can be rather odd. I shall relate to members an experience I had recently with my son, James, who undertook a gap year in his education last year. On the last night at his school in the wilds of Barnstaple, a burglar stole his phone, wallet and camera. His hosts took him to Heathrow, Qantas got him to Sydney and I got him home. Whilst he was overseas, he qualified for green P plates so on the way home we dropped by the Raymond Terrace motor registry to report the theft of his red P licence and sought to upgrade to his green P licence. However, we struck a problem. His passport was not sufficient identification to enable him to get his green P licence—and all his other identification had been stolen.

After some head scratching the registry officer said, "Craig, I can replace his red licence using his passport ID, and that will give him sufficient ID for his green licence." When I looked perplexed, the officer said to me, "Craig, we just follow the legislation; you write it." That is a true story. As I have said, the staff do a great job in somewhat trying circumstances. When I was first elected as the sole Hunter Liberal in 2007, I drove into Newcastle to introduce myself to the roads division of the Roads and Traffic Authority—the dirt pushers. The manager was unavailable at the time and I was told that he would get back to me. Well, I am pleased to say that last month I got a call from the Roads and Traffic Authority requesting a meeting. The manager did indeed get back to me, and it only took four years.

A few years ago the then member for Newcastle, Jodi Mackay, announced that the Labor Government would be building a new bridge over the Hunter River in Tourle Street to replace the old two-lane bridge. Although the bridge is in my electorate, the Roads and Traffic Authority refused to give me any details about the matter. On the opening day of the new bridge, I, along with everyone else in the Hunter, realised that the Roads and Traffic Authority had spent $45 million building a new two-lane bridge to replace an old two-lane bridge, and that the bridge that was built was obsolete the day it was opened. It then spent $5 million demolishing the old bridge—a bridge that I am reliably informed just needed a new concrete deck.

In his final year at university last year my son, Stuart, applied for various engineering positions with the Roads and Traffic Authority. When he applied to join the Roads and Traffic Authority, I did not have the heart to tell him that because of the bashing I had been giving the Roads and Traffic Authority over the last four years he would not be in the hunt. As it turned out, he was employed and he started work in February as a bridge maintenance engineer in Newcastle, and he is presently blowing up mountains on the Kempsey by-pass, which is in the Deputy Premier's electorate. He is getting experience from great young engineers, who have the opportunity to get rid of the toxic culture that developed in the Roads and Traffic Authority over the last 16 years and to make the organisation great once again. I should emphasise that Stuart did not speak out of school to me about his employer; he already has a strong sense of ethics, unlike those in the Opposition who need lessons with regard to ethics—starting with how to spell the word.

The Roads and Traffic Authority as we know it is completely dysfunctional. What it does is bureaucratic in the extreme and it is far more expensive than its private sector equivalents. A bridge designed and built by the Roads and Traffic Authority can cost $3,000 per square metre of deck area whereas an equivalent bridge—such as those built on the M7—can be built by private enterprise for only $1,000 per square metre of deck area. Why is that so? The reason is that the builders of the M7 bridges standardised spans and precast in a manufacturing-type environment. But there is hope. As I have said there are young, intelligent, hardworking professional engineers working within the Roads and Traffic Authority, and I take this opportunity to place on record some discussion points that have been suggested by one such young engineer.

He has suggested that internal requirements to report environmental incidents are too harsh; the Roads and Traffic Authority is not well defined and not realistic; some dirty water will always leave a site in a rain event, and that this does not need to be regarded as an "incident"; the Roads and Traffic Authority is too keen to please the environment sections of government; someone from the Office of Environment and Heritage should be accountable so that if the Roads and Traffic Authority decides to spend $100,000 on a fauna crossing that has a very low chance of ever being used, it should be held responsible; a living away from home allowance should be paid to staff who are asked to undertake work more than 120 kilometres away from their homes for any period greater than 10 days; promotion should be based on an annual report from one's boss that is auditable; people should be made responsible for the promotion of idiots; an annual evaluation report using scores should be used to rank people for promotion; bring back the divisional engineer role—which used to be a role to aspire to, but it does not exist anymore.

He said also that the ranking system will help define who is best; that a great asset is the technical expertise of the people; that we should be prepared to fund research development of better materials; and that there is distinct lack of direction for the staff. In his view a "blueprint" document for nominal targets is rubbish—no-one reads it. He said that general managers and above need to get out and see the troops. Let us get real targets out there that mean something. He suggests also that the variety of roles undertaken by Roads and Traffic Authority is too wide; that the risk exposure one faces on a major site is not the same as that faced by staff in a regional office, yet all staff rely on the same reporting systems. He says further that a realistic assessment of risk for each facet of the business may result and drive down insurance of the workforce; that Google should be used for maps and for mapping software to investigate the use of Cloud technology for information technology storage; and that if a private industry developer has the software, we should use it, and develop only revolutionary software that cannot be sourced elsewhere.

In his view there will be a mass exodus of senior staff over the next five years. He contends that serious moves need to be made to allow staff to provide part-time mentoring roles if they or the business require it; we should be prepared to sack people for poor performance. We may have to do that, unfortunately. He says that we should move away from using engineering solutions only to overcome difficult issues; that we should be prepared to forfeit land or environment to get a solution that will eliminate issues, and make sure that cost is a factor in all environmental decisions; that we should possibly have a one-stop shop for all technical engineering solutions for the State rather than one for the Roads and Traffic Authority, another for Ports, another for RailCorp, and so on.

He suggests further that we should remove Road and Fleet Services from the Roads and Traffic Authority and make them a statutory company like Hunter Water Australia. This will force people to be responsible for their output. He says that we should make better use of pre-plan routes; that we should use straight lines instead of bends just to suit minimal clearing issues. In other words, if the most direct path is through the national park, just bite the bullet and make the decision and build a path through the national park. The savings in dollars will be massive, and the construction time quicker. Those are comments from a young Roads and Traffic Authority engineer. More engineers are retiring than there are entering the profession; they are a declining resource. The warning is: Treat them with contempt at your peril.

Members might remember the JetCat Manly service that plied the harbour for many years. I recall one evening I struck up a conversation with a gentleman from Queensland who was here to negotiate a modest ticket price rise on the Pittwater ferry service. His company was based in Queensland—one of the largest ferry companies in Australia. We chatted about the JetCats and I asked whether Queensland had an equivalent service. He said it did. When I asked him how long would it take to get a ferry down here and put it in service he said, "Tomorrow morning. It's on permanent standby if the JetCats break down." He had a fast cat, with a similar passenger load that used a fraction of the fuel, yet the previous Government was still running JetCats.

On a recent trip to Auckland, my wife, Victoria, and I took a cruise on a reasonably large ferry on a very windy day. Guess how many crew members were on that ferry? There were two: the skipper and a deckhand to throw the first rope out because the engines hold the craft against the wharf once that is done. And guess how many crew members are on our Sydney ferries? I do not know, but there must be a few, given that they need flat screen televisions in their crew quarters. We have been left with a $5.2 billion black hole. This bill will greatly improve transport in this State. It will provide better services at lower costs. I congratulate Minister Gladys Berejiklian and Minister Duncan Gay—two hardworking and inspirational Ministers—who will be at the forefront of making New South Wales number one again.