By Dave Riley
BRISBANE — Anti-freeway mobilisations here have shaken the state Labor government. In the series of rallies generated from among anti-freeway activists, more than 12,000 people have registered their active opposition to the government's transport agenda. For many, this is their first political act. It constitutes a vast suburban backlash against the Wayne Goss government.
In an effort to placate this opposition, the government has now abandoned the proposed airport tollway but will proceed with all the other freeway projects.
In the suburbs south of the CBD, the Department of Transport's crash-through freeway policy was the final straw after years of urban neglect and rising pressures on the ability of home owners to sustain a mortgage.
In the new and fast-growing settlements on Brisbane's periphery, the much-heralded "Brisbane lifestyle" is under threat, and the Goss government is being blamed for all the uncertainties now being generated.
Topics like these that were taken up at a recent Green Left Weekly forum held at the New Farm Resistance Centre. Speakers from the New Ways Not Freeways coalition and the Democratic Socialist Party addressed the phenomenon of the campaign and suggested ways forward. But the talk delivered by David Matters — assistant secretary of the Public Transport Union — promoted the most interest because it set government policy into a broad context.
Workers sidelined
Matters pointed out that in the current debate, transport workers have been left on the sidelines. However, trade unionists had been confronting all tiers of government over transport policy for many years.
It was the transport workers who fought to save Brisbane's tram service in 1968. Brisbane City Council's Labor administration under the then lord mayor, Clem Jones, adopted the recommendations outlined in the Wilbur Smith Report, commissioned in 1962.
The scrapping of the trams, said Matters, was rationalised "to allow the extended development of the suburbs of Brisbane so that its population could expand into the newer regions of Belmont, Cleveland and further afield to the outer reaches of Logan City and Mount Gravatt. They believed that they would not be able to afford to run a tramway system, so they felt it was better to employ buses and cars and put in more freeways to service these areas.
"In the process of this sort of development, the council ran foul of the union. There was a lengthy stoppage which managed to save the current Brisbane City Council transport system, which then became a bus system.
"I don't believe", continued Matters, "that there would have been the extent of the bus system in Brisbane that we have today if there had not been that stoppage and had there not been that struggle by our union".
Today an even worse scenario is being planned through the Urban Transport Policy being developed by the federal Industrial Commission. Said Matters, "When I heard that the commission was going to do a report on our industry, I thought: here comes the foreclosure.
"The stuff contained in that report is now being put in place in all centres in Australia. The report talks about the heavy cost of government-owned transport and the need to reduce cost by contracting out services and by introducing forms of competitive tendering, corporatisation, franchising of services, developing regionalisation of services and so forth.
"It is interesting to read who gets targeted in the report for inefficiencies. The cost of fares is said to be too low, and the cost of labour in the industry is said to be too high. So the two groups who are targeted are the users of the public transport system and the people who are working in it."
National agenda
The recommendations in this report are set to visit Queensland. An internal ALP policy document, the Public Transport Review, applies national policy to Queensland. The document targets government subsidies and calls for competitive tenders.
In the Brisbane region the state government has already targeted private operators and told them that they have to attain zero subsidy level within five years. This year subsidies are to be reduced by 20%.
In the BCC bus system, the government is demanding a 30% productivity increase, with 18% of that to be delivered within 18 months or the council-run service could be closed down.
"You could get confused", Matters told the meeting, "and say this is merely a local agenda, but that would be a mistake. It is a national agenda; indeed, it is an international agenda."
In Western Australia the state government is transferring at least 50% of services to public competitive tender, and labour costs are to be reduced across the transport network — train, rail and bus.
In South Australia this year, 30% of the road passenger network is up for competitive tender.
In Victoria 80% of buses have been privatised. On the Melbourne trams there have been significant job losses especially with the phasing out of conductors.
In NSW the publicly owned system exists on a contract system, with areas broken up into three regional centres operated by the State Department of Transport through commercial contracts.
In Canberra and Darwin a review is proceeding.
While the Queensland Department of Transport is willing to provide funds to investigate "best practice" — such as spending money for consultants — it is not happy to provide money for infrastructure.
State transport minister David Hamill "will build us a new bus station or a new train terminus and then he will insist — because the state government owns it — that the private operator should have access to it too. That's the direction the public transport system is taking.
"At the same time as they are talking about how they are going to make public transport more efficient, the government is committed to the development of freeways."
The real problem that public transport workers face, said Matters, is that "the government does not have the political will to spend more money on public transport unless they can support the growing influence of private monopoly capital within the industry."