Action for Public Transport (N.S.W.) Inc.

A statement about the January 2012 fare rises posted on the NSW Transportinfo web site reads as though the government is passing the buck for responsibility for the action.

The statement says, "The Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) announced a fare increase which will take effect from Monday 2 January 2012."

This could be just sloppy wording, or a deliberate attempt by the government to offload the blame.

While the statement is technically correct (IPART did make such an announcement), it ignores the fact that IPART did not authorise the changes nor implement them.

For a start, IPART does not set fares. It determines maximum allowable fares.

All that IPART did was to confirm that the maximum fares, which it had set three or four years ago, were still valid. It is always the government's responsibility to approve and implement those fares, or lesser amounts.

Indeed, in December 2010, despite IPART having set higher maximum fares for 2011, the government chose not to implement any increase at all.

Whether or not the increases were justifiable is not the point here. The essence is that the government appears to be washing its hands of the action.