Hansard debates

Mr NORTHE (Morwell) — It gives me no great pleasure to rise today to grieve for commuters who utilise the Traralgon V/Line services. Much has been said over recent weeks about the state of V/Line services across our region. I think it is well and truly acknowledged, but for those commuters on the Traralgon line it is just an absolute disgrace. It is a shambles, given what they have to contend with at this point in time. Indeed the V/Line performance data for the month of January that has just been released is replete with information on how bad the situation is on the Traralgon line. There are two performance measures that are utilised by V/Line, and they are punctuality and reliability. The target for scheduled services to run is 96 per cent and the on-time target is 92 per cent. On the Gippsland line, reliability for January sits at 56 per cent, which just is an absolute and utter disgrace. Punctuality sits at 76 per cent. I might say on some of those other short-distance hauls that whilst they are better they are certainly not good enough and not to the standard that many of our V/Line commuters expect.

Can I say from the outset that I think sometimes forgotten in all this are V/Line staff. I personally know many people who work within the V/Line organisation. They are under massive pressure at the moment, dealing with the number of inquiries and the criticisms that they are getting with respect to this. I just want to put out there that we thank them for the work they do in what are very, very difficult circumstances.

I think it is worth noting the history of the Traralgon line — that is, over a period of the last 15 years or so, what has transpired or has not transpired and a litany of broken promises and commitments compared to what has occurred. That is in part the reason why we find ourselves in the situation we are in today. Many members may remember the regional fast rail project — I certainly do, as a resident of the Latrobe Valley — and the fanfare that came with that project back in the early 2000s. That was promised by the Bracks government. Now, I am not critical of any government that wants to invest in rail infrastructure, but commuters were sold a puppy; they certainly were.

It was one of those situations, if you read through the literature at the time, where this regional fast rail project was going to cost $80 million. When it finally went to the Auditor-General the figure was in excess of $1 billion, so we have history repeating itself. Indeed in many quarters it was not called the fast rail project; it was actually called the farce rail project.

In his comments made at the time, the then Auditor-General, Wayne Cameron, levelled criticism at the project saying that the construction deadlines had not been met and that it had been hampered by a lack of proper planning in the government's Department of Infrastructure. He went on to say that:

The journey time savings for these travellers will be at best … negligible.

At the time regional commuters were told a whole host of things, including that there would be substantial time savings. Geelong to Melbourne would be 45 minutes; Ballarat would be 60 minutes; Bendigo 80 minutes; and Traralgon 90 minutes. By the time it was constructed and built, and where we sit today, if I do a comparison on the Traralgon line, is that 90 minutes has turned into 145 minutes on average, and that does not factor in breaches of punctuality. That is actually looking at the average on V/Line's timetables for the Traralgon line. We had a promise of getting to Melbourne in 90 minutes on the Traralgon line. In reality it sits at more than 145 minutes. That happened in the space of a few short years, which is nothing short of a disgrace.

For commuters on the Traralgon line the biggest kick in the guts came in 2009. Again, I am not being critical of governments for investing in regional rail infrastructure, but the regional rail link project that invested multibillion dollars of taxpayers money for Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo completely ignored the Traralgon line. It was an absolute disgrace. Our commuters are still feeling the pinch of that, and I have no doubt at all that the lack of investment on the Traralgon line is why we are now experiencing far more disruptions than are currently occurring on other regional tracks.

Our community has been reminded many, many times that leaving Gippsland off that particular project was not right; it was wrong, and there was no further commitment from the Labor government at the time to do any infrastructure investment on our rail network. It was simply a disgrace. We know at the time of course that when there was a change of government the coalition government had to find multimillions of dollars to fund the regional rail link project in its current form because there was no money for trains, there was no money for signalling and there was no money for grade separations. It was simply staggering.

Of course quite rightly people would say the coalition was in government for a period of time and ask, 'What activity did you guys undertake?', and that was a reasonable question to ask. Unfortunately because of the state of the track we had to invest millions and millions of dollars in maintenance all the way through, and the member for Gippsland East would well remember some of the debacles that occurred on his line. They were really the result of neglect of maintenance over a period of time, and the coalition had to invest millions of dollars to upgrade the line.

In listening to community members over a period of time what the coalition government did was have a plan in place to make sure that it provided additional services for the Traralgon line to make sure there were additional carriages. We made sure that we had a duplication of the tracks between Bunyip and Longwarry. They were vital investments that would address some of the capacity, service and punctuality issues that had long been at the forefront for the Traralgon line, unfortunately. We well remember the Cranbourne-Pakenham upgrades that the coalition announced, that again would have addressed some of those concerns around level crossing removals, around high-capacity trains and around some of the signalling issues that would be dealt with. There were new stations and a whole package that again has been taken off the table by this government.

So there has been a plan; there is a plan. Indeed there have been petitions circulating within our community and the Gippsland community calling on the Labor government to adopt the measures and initiatives that the coalition was going to put in place. But since Labor came to government all we have had on the Traralgon line is essentially nothing. There is absolutely nothing occurring. Of course our local media has been replete with commentary in regard to this issue, and I will just read a few of the headlines: 'Rail waiting game' and 'V/Line rail frustrations to continue for six more weeks'. Well, that was a little while ago now; it is about six months on now. Other headlines are: 'Compensation earmarked for rail commuters', 'V/Line free travel continues', 'Free travel follows V/Line fiasco' and 'Train pain continues for Valley commuters' — and it goes on and on, so it is certainly very much at the forefront of the issues for our local constituents.

We have had an enormous amount of feedback from regular commuters, not forgetting the fact that it is important that if people want to settle in regional areas, they have to have reliable services. This does our community an inordinate amount of harm in terms of somebody looking to settle in the Latrobe Valley region or even in the seat of Narracan or if they want to start a business. You need to have reliable services, and we simply do not have them at the moment, so our community is not shown in a good light of having that reliability. For heaven's sake, here we are in 2016 and we are talking about a major regional network being effectively out of operation for a number of months. It is simply not good enough.

We have been contacted by a number of regular commuters, and I will quickly read from a couple of letters. One is from Hayley. She writes in regard to the V/Line train systems:

… my biggest concern is that the Traralgon line is being impacted so much more than the other lines. I know we have more than one issue occurring but for us to have a total of four trains running into and out of the city a day. Each which are packed and people are standing for hours to commute to work. Commuters are being told that they are unable to increase the number of trains or carriages because there are only a limited number of these trains available. However it is reported by V/Line that only 20 per cent of the trains on the other services have been cancelled and replaced by coaches.

This just seems really unfair that more is not being done for our community.

It is really difficult to be catching an early train to ensure I can get to work on time and having an extra 45 minutes each day of work and that is not including extra delays that have occurred most days of the nightly return trains.

There is Reg from Newborough who travels from Moe each day to Melbourne. He says:

I would … like to highlight that this … situation is worsening with the 4.58 p.m. service from Southern Cross breaking down last night and subsequently taking us 4 hours to get home, only to be followed up with a 3-plus-hour trip into the city this morning.

Over the past few weeks V/Line has provided travellers on the Gippsland line with free travel, this is set to end this Sunday evening with the expectation that we pay full fares as of next week for a service that is taking us double the time to reach our location.

So for Hayley and Reg who work in Melbourne on a regular basis the impact on their daily lives, effectively spending 3 hours or 4 hours more a day trying to commute, is absolutely disgusting. I mentioned in question time today the matter of Gillian Young and her daughter who has a disability requiring medical appointments in Melbourne and the issues she has had with the replacement coaches, which have made it very difficult for her. I am a fair and reasonable person I think, and I do concede that the minister said she would take up that matter with her personally, and I expect that that will be the case. We have also had another matter from Denise, and her and her husband having to travel to Melbourne frequently to attend medical appointments. Again what do they do? Cancel the medical appointments because it is simply not feasible or they do not have an ability to go on a replacement bus?

Getting to the facts, I find astounding some of the facts and figures that have come out of the minister's mouth with respect to this — this assertion that the coalition cut V/Line funding. One only has to look at the budget figures for Labor's last term in government in 2009–10 when the total income to V/Line was $475 million. In our last full financial year in government, in 2013–14, it was $577 million, so there was close to $102 million more in our last full budget compared to Labor's. It is a complete fallacy that the minister is communicating to our communities.

The other thing which I found really interesting was looking at the minister's media release of 4 February. The member for Narracan and I both picked up on this. In part of the minister's release she talked about the stability of services now for V/Line trains and coaches. If I can quote from it, it says:

With the service pattern now stable —

yeah, right! —

and 80 per cent of services operating as trains.

Eighty per cent of services operating as trains! It just defies logic.

When you go through each service for each day on the Traralgon line, which I have done many times, keeping in the back of my mind the comment about the 80 per cent of services operating as trains, effectively on the Traralgon line there are 37 services per day during the week. That includes a Friday night service that comes back from Southern Cross. So if you work on that basis of 37, in total there are 11 services operating as trains — 11 out of 37. To my thinking, that is not 80 per cent of trains that are actually operating as trains. It is actually less than 30 per cent.

I would ask the minister to not come into the Gippsland community and put out incorrect facts and figures, but to get it right and tell it how it is: it is a disaster, it is a disgrace. It is putting many of our commuters at their absolute wits' end. I do concede that the government has apologised and is sorry for it, but what our commuters are wanting is action.

There is very little information that has been provided to our commuters in terms of what the issues are, when they are actually going to be resolved and how people like Gillian, whom I mentioned today, are going to be supported. If this continues for months and months, there are many, many Gillians out there who will need support from the government to be able to get to their destinations for a whole host of reasons. many of them medical. It is a simple fact of life.

The government needs to step up to the plate and realise that the situation is not good enough for those commuters on the Traralgon line and make sure it is doing more to support our community in terms of not only investment infrastructure upgrades but also supporting our community in the meantime.