In the years since, the government has been unable to achieve its plan to require bus drivers to work at the weekend.

Newly released cabinet documents from 2010 show the then transport minister, Jon Stanhope, recommended the government embark on a "significant reform agenda that is likely to provoke industrial action", including moving to a seven-day roster.

The documents also show the government's communications strategy included "engaging aggressively to rebut false claims and suggestions by unions".

But the government ultimately wound back its claims in the bargaining process, with the Transport Workers Union making few concessions at the end of the protracted bargaining process, which included a day-long bus strike.

A communications strategy provided to cabinet on May 3, 2010 said the government would need to urgently deliver a series of messages to the community, including the high rates of pay ACT bus drivers enjoyed despite the operator's inefficiencies.

The Canberra Times was soon provided a copy of a consultancy report by the ACT government which showed ACTION was blowing more than 30 per cent of its $100 million annual budget on waste and inefficiency. It was reported on the newspaper's front page on May 8, 2010.

"Independent benchmarking shows that ACTION is currently the most expensive public sector provider of bus services nationally and also the least efficient in terms of utilisation of resources. ACTION's preferred bargaining strategy is based around reducing this gap between cost and efficiency and committing to genuine industrial reform," an April cabinet submission said.

Mr Stanhope publicly said at the time the key sticking point in the union negotiations were the weekend rosters, the proportion of full-time to part-time drivers and the number of transport officers.

"We want a genuine conversation about the proportion of full-time to part-time workers, we would like to negotiate that," Mr Stanhope said.

The ACT government sought to remove a 60-40 ratio for full-time and part-time drivers, which was opposed by unions. The ratio remains in the present agreement.

The union's position, the documents showed, was bus drivers had five-day-a-week jobs despite the seven-day timetable of services.

Cabinet was briefed that claims in the bargaining process that would resonate with the community should also be prioritised.

"In this respect, ... '7 Day Rostering' is likely to be of greater concern/interest to the general community than staffing ratios," a cabinet submission said.

Later in May the Sunday Canberra Times reported a newly qualified ACTION bus driver earned $59,272 a year after 18 days training and six months' probation, while a first-year medical graduate earned $54,022 in ACT Health after seven years' study.

MORE A.C.T. CABINET DOCUMENTS:

The newspaper report, published on May 23, was the type of public messaging outlined in the communication strategy presented to cabinet.

However, the strategy did not prevent a day-long drivers' strike, which meant no services ran on June 25. ACTION stood down its entire workforce in response to industrial action, in an effort to cool tensions on planned picket lines.

It took until July 2011 for a deal to be struck, with the bus drivers only making one major concession and weekend work remaining voluntary.

The ACT government again sought to introduce seven-day rosters in the 2018 agreement, but instead rolled over the existing agreement terms.

The government and the union had been locked in negotiations over a new agreement for ACTION bus drivers for almost two years when the deal was agreed in 2018.

The Transport Workers Union called for the bus timetable to be pared back after the introduction of more weekend services due to what it described as a driver shortage in 2019, after a new network was introduced.

The upcoming bargaining process for the next agreement was put hold due to COVID.

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