Thursday, 3 April 2025

Gippsland rail services

Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (17:56): (1582) My adjournment matter this evening is for the Minister for Public and Active Transport in the other place, and it relates to the shambolic bus replacement service on the Gippsland rail line. Minister, Gippsland rail commuters have suffered delays, cancellations and replacements for the past 10 years, with no net material gain – only pain. The action I seek is for the minister to fund replacement coaches that terminate in CBD stations instead of dumping Gippsland passengers at the East Pakenham station and letting them fend for themselves to catch a Metro train – if they can – some hundreds of metres away. For 10 years we have had train pain. It has dragged on, and we did not think it could get any worse, but it has. Locals are suffering this half-baked rail replacement coach service. Why? Because Labor is penny-pinching on regional people to pay for its cost blowouts in city-centric projects.

Due to Metro rail upgrades, Gippslanders are forced to exit the coach on the countryside of East Pakenham station and then board a city-bound train. The Pakenham bus stop is some 300 metres from the train platform. It is in the elements – there is heat, rain – it is dark and unsafe in the evening, and certainly signage is inadequate. Elderly people and those with mobility issues struggle to walk carrying luggage, having to navigate this most unsatisfactorily. People are missing medical appointments, and those who commute to the city for work are furious. The 145 k journey between Traralgon and Melbourne, for example, has taken some of my constituents between 3½ hours and 6 hours, and apparently they were told this will continue until the end of winter. The problem could be avoided if the government actually chose to coach everybody, as they should, down to the city and Southern Cross station. So my colleagues – and I thank them – Danny O’Brien, Martin Cameron and the Honourable Tim Bull have all raised this substandard Gippsland V/Line service for many weeks and months and it feels like years. We have got cost blowouts in the city. Country people continue to have to wear the pain of this. Adding insult to injury, the PTV app and the V/Line journey planner do not match up, so people who are trying to navigate their way from East Pakenham into the city have got conflicting information from state government agencies.

Lastly, I say again: get your act together, Minister, please: actually designate and fund the bus service all the way into town. We know that Labor cannot manage money and cannot manage projects, and again Gippsland V/Line passengers are paying the price.