Wednesday, 2 April 2025

Gippsland East electorate public transport

Tim BULL (Gippsland East) (19:05): (1103) My adjournment tonight is to the Minister for Public and Active Transport, and the action I am seeking is for the minister to commit to maintaining direct bus services from Bairnsdale to Melbourne on that Gippsland line when we have train outages. We recently had the train service direct to Southern Cross suspended. There were works being done. The reason as to why it occurred I am not sure of, but for whatever reason there was an outage. The replacement bus services, which normally go all the way to Southern Cross, changed over at Pakenham East. Those elderly people in my community and those that were going on holidays and were going to the airport with their luggage were forced to get off the bus, walk over to the metro platform and get on a train. It is very difficult for our elderly train-travelling clients or bus-travelling clients to do that.

There is no reason other than finances not to have the bus services going all the way into Southern Cross. Why this took place I am not sure, but it does beg many questions that need to be answered. Why were we not given the full replacement bus service into Southern Cross? Why were direct coach services only offered on weekends? It would be good to hear from the minister if this was a money-saving exercise or there was another reason. If the direct lines via the buses were going in on the weekends, one wonders why they could not go in during the week. I do believe, and I have been reliably informed, that was a cost-saving measure so that it did not cost the government more money to pay the bus companies, so once again train travellers and bus travellers in the east of the state suffer from a government that is looking to save money at every single corner. The one element I seek from the minister is to, in the future, commit when there are train outages that the bus services will go all the way along the line, picking up at Bairnsdale, Sale and along the way into Southern Cross so we do not have to change over to the metro service at Pakenham.