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the Australian Federal Police Commissioner to take on direct responsibility as the ACT Chief Police Officer, as an interim measure. Also, police and licensing authorities have been asked to develop a coordinated strategy for tackling alcohol and community safety problems, which have caused so much concern in our community of recent days.

As I noted at the outset, reform of our public transport system will be achieved over the term of this Government, because it simply must be. We will deliver a public transport reform package that brings a competitive public transport industry to the ACT, in line with recommendations of the Hilmer report and agreements forged at COAG. In 1995-96 we will set in place a structure to enable ACTION to be corporatised from 1 July 1996. As a first step, the policy and regulatory role in relation to public transport will be separately established within the Department of Urban Services and a purchaser-provider relationship established with ACTION. A further substantial reduction will be made to the government subsidy to ACTION in 1995-96. The aim is to put ACTION at the leading edge of public transport authorities and place it in a competitive position with the private sector. We want ACTION to win tenders when finally tenders are put out to the private sector and, of course, to ACTION. We can give this guarantee: There will be no reduction in the level of services to Canberra's commuters.

We do not intend that transport initiatives will stop there. We will be working to improve the Canberra region's local and international transport links. We will do this in the short term by encouraging regular international charter flights into Canberra. Down the track, we will examine the feasibility of entering into a joint venture or consortium with the private sector to upgrade the Canberra Airport to international standards. Of course, we remain 100 per cent committed to the very fast train link between Canberra and Sydney - something that would make all the difference to Canberra and the region, particularly with regard to the Olympic Games.

Urban management is an area where this Government has already acted decisively. One of our first actions was to integrate City Parks into the City Services administration. This will provide a framework to improve the effectiveness of our urban services in a more integrated and efficient manner, particularly when considering priorities and service standards at the local area level. We will build on the precinct management approach to ensure direct community participation in all of these decisions. We will examine all our urban services to ensure that our service standards and costs can be compared in a competitive fashion with the best in the country. We do not want to be just as good as anyone else; we believe that we can be the best.

Waste management is already delivered through the tender system, and it is now time to meet the national agreement to halve the amount of waste going to landfill by the year 2000. We will expedite the ACT waste management strategy. More cost-effective services will be introduced in areas such as registration, licensing, and traffic regulation, while the introduction of accrual accounting will put the spotlight on the long-term structural problems associated with the maintenance of our urban infrastructure.

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