Labor’s shuffling of transport agencies today is moving chairs with no benefit for Victorian commuters. Public Transport Victoria and VicRoads have been thrown together in one large new agency, The Department of Transport.
Transport for Victoria, trumpeted long and loud by the Andrews Government as the solution to Victoria’s transport woes has been quietly put out to pasture.
Pushing together multiple failing agencies is unlikely to create a new body that will address the cost overruns and poor performance of Victoria’s trains, trams and buses. There’s nothing in this for Victorians. A new Melbourne-based mega- bureaucracy hardly seems like the solution to cancelations, poor reliability, poor punctuality and station skipping.
Commuters suffering under shocking train performance through January and February are hardly likely to get home quicker. In addition, the merging of these bodies will make cost overruns on Labor’s troubled construction projects harder to track.
No doubt there will be massive costs in rebadging and rebranding these agencies; money that could have been better spent on improving services.
Already, under Daniel Andrews and Labor we have seen the mismanagement of project after project with cost blowouts totalling more than $25 billion.
Under the Andrews Labor Government there has been a massive 30% growth in public service jobs, largely in metropolitan Melbourne. Meanwhile two-thirds of public sector organisations with staff cuts have come from regional Victoria or organisations that undertake functions largely for regional Victoria.
David Davis MP
Shadow Minister for Public Transport (Metro) and Transport Infrastructure