Tuesday, 4 March 2025

 Gabrielle WILLIAMS (Dandenong – Minister for Transport Infrastructure, Minister for Public and Active Transport) (14:43): This Labor government is pulling every lever it has to build homes where people want and need to live. We need more homes, and they need to be well connected to jobs, to education and to friends and families as well. Later this year we will be opening the Metro Tunnel and taking the Cranbourne–Pakenham to Sunbury corridor out of the city loop. For the thousands of Victorians who live along this corridor this means we are providing access to turn-up-and-go train services. But beyond the benefits to just the Cranbourne–Pakenham to Sunbury corridor, it is about freeing up capacity – 45 per cent capacity – in the city loop. Why is that important? That is important because it means that we can run more services across the rest of our rail network as our population grows and shifts and as we build more homes.

We would not be able to meet that demand and provide those extra services where people will be living without delivering the Metro Tunnel, which makes it even more ridiculous that those opposite opposed it. They did not get it back then; they still do not get it now. Meanwhile, while works on the tunnel have been underway, we have been doing what we can to deliver service uplifts, capacity uplifts and reliability uplifts across our network right now. In fact this Labor government has delivered more than 2000 additional weekly train services and over 20,000 additional weekly bus services since 2014. That includes – and this is just a snapshot – 117 extra weekly services on the Frankston line, 45 extra services per week on the Lilydale line, 165 on the Mernda line and 75 extra on the Hurstbridge line. I could go on and on and on. Those opposite have opposed just about every project that has enabled us to deliver those extra services. When they had the chance, they cut services and they closed train lines. Do not trust them.