Sydney lifesaver

Matt O'Grady is a life saver. On the night of Wednesday, March 29, he dived into the dark waters under the Sydney Harbour Bridge to rescue three women from the wreckage of a boat collision.

Matt is one of four brave Sydney Ferry crew to save lives in recent years. Now it's the ferries that the workers are fighting to rescue.

Sydney Ferries is as much a Sydney icon as the Opera House, the Bridge or Bondi Beach. This is why Matt and his workmates believe that like Bondi Beach, the Bridge and the Opera House, it should never be privatised.

The majority of Sydneysiders agree - 59 per cent oppose the privatisation of Sydney ferries. Polling by Galaxy Research, commissioned by unions in August showed that relatively few people were aware that Labor planned to privatise public services when they voted at the March election. Even among Labor's own supporters, only 26 per cent knew privatisation was on the agenda, with as many as 33 per cent less likely to have given their vote to the ALP had they known.

Earlier polls run by the Manly Daily and The Sydney Morning Herald showed majority public support for keeping the ferries public.

"Private ferries suck," said Matt. "If the ferries were privatised we'd all go casual."

Matt speaks from experience. Before coming to Sydney Ferries two years ago, he worked six years for Matilda cruises. Six years as a casual - full time over the summer and around 30 hours a week during the off-season.

"The private ferries are worse for safety and you don't get a better service either," he said. "They were never on schedule and always keeping people waiting. Half the time they don't turn up."

Yet privatisation is now being considered by the state Labor government.

In April this year it set up the Special Commission of Inquiry to take submissions.

Commissioner Brett Walker who heads the inquiry also describes Sydney Ferries as iconic. But he noted a failure to integrate buses with ferries and the need for fleet replacement. He also noted privatisation of one form or another was an option.

"It would be wrong not to recognise that for today's public forum, the issue which is usually summed up by the one word 'privatisation' is a very important one," he said at the July hearing, clearly defining the two poles of complete public ownership or the public service model to the complete sale of assets and shares, with various options in between.

Privatisation no panacea

The Maritime Union is opposing privatisation (see page 24) as is the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union who cover the maintenance workers at the Balmain shipyard. But Transdev-TSL who operate the private ferry service in Brisbane and Veolia Transport who run the Melbourne trains are lobbying to take over the ferries. MacBank is also hovering.

Manly Mayor Peter MacDonald is no proponent of privatisation. He points to the Kennett Government sell off of public transport in Victoria as "an absolute disaster".

The Mayor was speaking at the first public forum held by the Special Commission of Inquiry into Sydney Ferries in July.

Manly Ferries is one of the major public transport links in the Sydney CBD and 26 per cent of Manly residents are employed in the CBD. Half the revenue from Sydney Ferries comes from the Manly route. So it was an appropriate venue for the forums to kick off.

The mayor spoke passionately of what he called "the poetry of the freshwater class of the Manly Ferry" - it's "comfortable, happy atmosphere and wonderful service".

He said he held a petition of 5000 Manly residents in defence of retaining the Freshwater.

The Mayor's anti-privatisation sentiment was shared by Manly resident Heidi Robard, who holds a masters in professional ethics and has undertaken a study of water privatisation in Australia. She spent 18 months living in the UK and experiencing the 'displeasure' of using the privatised British Rail system.

"The large problem with privatisation is that a private company wants to make a profit," she said. "That is the first and foremost thought a private company has in mind. That is why British Rail has fallen over in England, and also the water supply. I do not believe privatisation is the panacea that some people might think it is."

Manly residents have long memories.

"The ferry service started 155 years ago and there were days when the timetable was thrown out the window and the boats would run between Manly and the quay as fast as they could pull up to the wharf and unload their passengers," said Tom Shanahan.

Mr Hopper said before the Bridge was built Sydney Ferries, which was a separately owned and operated service, had no less than 33 ferries. The construction of the bridge impacted on all those services and led to an increase in the use of the car. He argued that now the bridge has reached capacity, the ferries are needed more than ever.

Another Manly local Hugh Burns pointed out that Labor state government rescued Manly ferries back in the seventies when it was a swinging seat.

"Had the service been in private sector hands, in the market, to use a current term, we would have lost it," he said. "Because the ferries as people would know back in the mid to early 1970s were 50-60 years old. They could not be replaced in terms of economics; it had to be a political decision that the ferries be replaced."

But the push for a "public private partnership" to fund a new fleet of ferries is very much on the state Labor Government agenda. Under this scheme the government would keep the ferries and wharves public but privatise the operation of the ferries. This is how privatisation works in Melbourne, Brisbane and London.

DR PAUL MEES used Melbourne as an example in his testimony to a Commission hearing in August.

He said the Kennett Government did privatise or, to be precise, franchise the train and tram systems back in 1999.

"It sounded very good on paper," said Dr Mees. "It was very innovative and impressive. You couldn't open the financial pages of the serious media in Australia, or indeed internationally, without reading about it in the earlier years because it was so clever."

But he said the current argument in Melbourne now is that it was an example of something that was a good idea that was done badly.

Dr Mees advocates public transport over private arrangements.

"We don't have ferries in Melbourne," he said. "The provision of ferry services has always been left up to the private sector and, as a result, we don't have any. Although if you were to look at the geography of Port Phillip Bay, you might be surprised that we don't.

"My pin-up transport system is the regional system in Zurich which covers the entire state," he said. "You can look them up on their web site. - The first lesson is that, in order to plan a timetable for a multimodal system, you have to be very interventionist. You really do need Stalinist central planning. If you regulate and wait for people to work it out for themselves by giving them KPIs and parameters and things, as we have seen in Sydney, you would die of old age before it happened.

"There are only five people who do all the infrastructure planning and timetable planning for the entire state of Zurich."

Pro Privatisation

The obvious privatisation proponents were the companies who stood to profit from the move.

Robert Horninge of Transdev-TSL, a partnership between French company Transdev and Australia's Transfield Services is keen to take over Sydney Ferries. The company already operates integrated urban public transport in Europe, the Yarra Trams in Melbourne, the Brisbane Ferries and the ShoreLink bus company in Sydney.

He says Yarra Trams has delivered over 25 per cent increase in patronage between 1999 and 2006. Brisbane Ferries patronage increased over three years by 63 per cent.

"We work very closely with its staff, employees and their unions," he said. "We would not reduce Sydney Ferries services, because we believe in the development potential. We would not increase the fares."

Veolia Transport which operate the monorail, light rail and 250 buses in Sydney; the trains in Melbourne and large ferry operations in Europe was also keen to stress it had good relations with the unions and staff in all operations.

While the privatisation debate continues there is broad consensus that the transport system needs to be integrated. Sydney is the only city in Australia that doesn't have a fully multimodal fare system. Melbourne has had one since 1983.

"I think about the elementary importance of a transport system permitting people to get off a ferry and catch a bus, rather than watch a bus go up the hill," said Commissioner Walker. "The ferry service cannot be seen as a self contained or an isolated independent free standing part of the public transport system."

He also stressed fleet replacement and a change of culture as key factors in getting the ferries working.

Bad bosses

Who is to blame for problems with Sydney Ferries - the bosses or the workers? The Special Commission of Inquiry into Sydney Ferries held its first public forum in Manly on July 26 and management was a topic of contention.

The Liberal Member for Manly Mike Baird is no friend of the workers, but his opinion of management was even more scathing.

"We have been supplementing bad management - pure and simple; we really have been," he said. "Fares should not increase to make up for past mismanagement."

Predictably President of the Chamber of Commerce Bob Smith blamed the workers, not management. He advocated a 20 per cent wage cut and axing one in five jobs. But Keelah Lam, Fairlight resident and commuter praised the Manly Ferries workers for returning lost property and suffering bad bosses.

"The staff that appear to be extremely unhappy seem to be very honest," he said. "I would imagine this is more a management issue, that the staff are not being included in the decision making, that they are not being informed properly about what is happening with their ferry service. I don't think it is very good place to work."

Manly resident Ms Redford was another commuter to come to the defence of the workers. She said she moved to Manly because of the ferry service. "I feel like the ferry staff have been copping it tonight when perhaps that is not fair. They really get a barrelling sometimes from people who have missed their ferry because they decided to get a cup of coffee or something. Sometimes it's their fault, sometimes it's not, but they cop it all the time."

"The staff are the customer service front end of our grief and aggression," said John McAtee.

He blamed mismanagement for ferry delays, citing his ferry having to sit for 20 minutes over the Heads to allow the jet cat to overtake it.

"Instead of getting home in 30 minutes plus 10 minutes, I was getting home in an hour and 20 minutes," he said. "The number of passengers plummeted during that period."

The Inquiry report and recommendations are due on October 31. Full report next MWJ