You’d think there would only be one answer to the question, “hey, do you want $700,000?”.
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If someone wants to give you that much money – and without any need to pay it back – it’s hard to think of someone who would say, “umm, no thanks”.
Or, even worse, “Umm, that’s not enough. I need more”.
Yet that’s exactly the situation we find ourselves in when it comes to the seemingly never-ending saga of the Gong Shuttle.
Nearly seven long months ago on November 1, the government dropped the bombshell that there would be no more free rides on the Gong Shuttle.
Transport Minister Andrew Constance had decided to cut funding to 75 per cent, bringing it in line with other forms of public transport.
The remaining 25 per cent would come from the introduction of fares.
Not surprisingly, the city was outraged but the government refused to change its mind.
In December last year, Wollongong City Council and the University of Wollongong agreed to pay $700,000 a year for three years to fill that 25 per cent shortfall and keep the bus free.
Four months later, Transport for NSW came back to the negotiation table and said, “Umm, we've done the numbers and, well, that’s just not enough money. You’ll need to give us more”.
The University of Wollongong and Wollongong City Council have drawn the line in the sand and said “hey, we've already offered you $700,000 a year. You're not getting any more”.
And that’s where the negotiations stand. And that’s where they may well stay, given the government’s apparent dislike of paying any more than the same 75 per cent it pays for other buses in the state.
But hopefully saner heads in Sydney will prevail.
Hopefully someone up there is familiar with the phrase “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”.
We have two bodies in the Illawarra that recognise the immense importance the bus – both to those who catch it and those who don’t (if you drive into town, keep in mind the extra cars the shuttle takes off the road).
They felt it so important they decided to contribute more than $2 million over three years to keep it the way it is.
Knocking back such a generous offer would seem like the government was never really interested in keeping the shuttle free.