And the dissenting statement was subject to a word limit, so they never got to address all the issues for dissent. The report is basically a political charter for Labor and Greens. One point the dissenting statement made is that Labor needs to explain its own history of privatisation if it's now so against it.
My perception of the quality of the Perth services is that they're excellent and still fully justify the operational contracting after all these years.Merc1107 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 21, 2022 11:29 am I'll need to read more, but I think it is good the issue of a publicly-subsidised service being run to make a profit was brought up. Even if the privates are cheaper than the STA, that they can turn a profit from what is effectively an unprofitable venture is repugnant, in principle anyway.
Isn't one of the reasons for franchising to reduce the amount of public subsidy? I don't see any conflict at all. The NSW Auditor found that franchising reduced costs to the taxpayer and increased efficiency of the operations. That's a public benefit.
Public transport isn't inherently unprofitable. It wasn't in the past and there's no real reason why it couldn't become profitable again. The Sydney Metro project is partly premised on its operation eventually breaking even, if not yielding a profit.