Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I put on the record my thanks to all the participants last night of the Active Travel for Sustainable Cities parliamentary dinner. I particularly want to say thank you to the Cycling Promotion Fund—Peter Bourke, who is their general manager, and also Stephen Hodge, who is a key player in that organisation in and around Canberra. I also want to make special mention of and thank David Epstein, who is the Vice-President of Corporate and Regulatory Affairs for Optus; Neil Trembath, who is the Chief People and Sustainability Officer for Ausenco; and Atsuhide Seguchi from Sekesui House, who, among many others—including many colleagues in this place—were at the dinner to hear about a very interesting, but a really topical debate around what more we can do in active transport.

I think we are all familiar in this place about governments at all levels—local, state and federal—playing a role in active transport, in transport policy and development. There is also a significant role to be played by the corporate sector, and that was the theme last night. It was about talking to two fantastic large companies in Australia with global footprints about what they do in these particular areas. I want to briefly go through their stories.

Ausenco is a large company that has somewhere in the order of 3,500 staff. Through some good work they did in wanting to look after their staff they realised that there was actually an economic as well as a social impact that they could have by re-doing some of their policy, particularly in terms of active transport. They decided to invest in their offices around the world, not just in Australia, and build facilities to help people commute to work—mostly by bike but some might also walk to work, run to work, or find other methods to get to work. They also built a gym, change and shower facilities, and looked at how they could better connect people with their organisation and be more a part of their community. You might think it is just a feel good thing that a large organisation like Ausenco might do, but in fact there was an enormous cost saving. Their annual staff turnover went from 10 per cent down to less than five per cent, which had an enormous cost saving base for them. It also meant that people were more productive, there was more encouragement for recommendations to work at the company, and they found that from two years ago when they first started the program and were 10 per cent short on staff, 250 people were not earning a single dollar for that company. They have managed to turn that around. As well as doing something for the broader environment and a broader social good, they also did something really great for their shareholders. They did it through some really simple things: providing shower facilities, encouraging their employees to be active, to be healthier and to do a whole range of things. They did it all without any assistance from any government, which is really commendable.

Optus is a well-known telecommunications company, located in Macquarie Park, with 6,500 workers. They have a campus. They had to think about how to get people to and from their site. It is so big, particularly when they have a limit of just 2,000 car-parking spaces, so they embarked on a similar journey, asking: 'How do we encourage active transport? How do we get people to look after themselves and their health and get to work in a better condition?' They found that there was an enormous economic upturn through what that provided for the organisation. They worked with the local council in the area to provide cycling paths, to build infrastructure and to look at ways that they could contribute to the local community, by going down this path. Again, this was all done without any specific government incentive.

It is really great to see that the corporate world can lead in these areas and does not always require government funding. But the fact is that our tax system is currently skewed towards incentivising people to drive—to commute by using a vehicle—and I certainly believe, as many do, that we need to look at a broader way that active transport can be incentivised as well. These days we know a few more facts and details around evidence based research indicating how good this can be, not just for an organisation or for a country but for individual people. We know that inactivity, for example, is the leading cause of chronic disease right alongside smoking and is recognised as the major cause of disease in OECD countries. There is plenty of evidence in the area of health that points in that direction. But also, if you look at the congestion in cities, productivity and lifestyle, there are so many departmental and portfolio areas that active transport impact on that there is a more global view and a more global approach to the good that can be done. The simplest way, of course, is just to be a bit more conscious personally about being active. Find a better way to get yourself to work on a daily basis. We have great corporate leaders and great government that can do it. (Time expired)