FAQ Consulting
Energy, Economics & Strategic Planning
29/15 The Esplanade
Darwin NT 0800
08 -8981 0028

To the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee

Inquiry into the investment of Commonwealth and State funds in public passenger transport infrastructure and services
Statement for Committee Hearing in Darwin, 22 July 2009

Introduction
I am the principal of FAQ Consulting. I thank the Committee for your invitation to address you today. I am reminded that I last gave evidence to a Senate hearing in 1979 to an Inquiry into Alternative Sources of Energy. I developed that submission as a member of the Central Western Regional Advisory Council based in Bathurst NSW. Looking back a lot of the issues have not changed. The context of that inquiry was the global impact of Sheikh Yamani, and OPEC oil price hikes in the seventies. Today the context is more complex and more urgent but the directions for change are much the same.

My opening statement, like my submission, addresses two of the six terms of reference of your current inquiry:

• d. measures by which the Commonwealth Government could facilitate improvement in public passenger transport services and infrastructure;
  and
• e. the role of the Commonwealth Government legislation, taxation, subsidies, policies and other mechanisms that either discourage or encourage public passenger transport.

Regarding d, measures to facilitate improvement in public passenger
transport services and infrastructure I will focus on two matters:

• expanding the generation of clean electricity to fuel Australia’s transport requirements;
• ensuring that new urban development is undertaken in conceit with public transit and transport facilities; and
• the urgent need to provide transport services: including school buses community transport and inter-urban services in Indigenous areas of the Northern Territory; and in particular to support development of twenty new towns.

[end page 1]
[the full submission is in this PDF]