Tuesday, 12 August 2025

 Bill TILLEY (Benambra) (19:14): (1247) I wish to raise a matter for the attention of the Minister for Public and Active Transport. The action I seek is a review of the passenger safety of the increasingly overcrowded V/Line trains on the north-east line, including the public release of that review. This is Rail Safety Week and yet we have trains that are simply deathtraps. Regular travellers report increasingly passengers are left standing or in entirely inappropriate side seating in these overbooked trains. In the first six months of this year buses had to be provided to cater for passengers added to the train and unreserved tickets – that means standing or sitting on the carriage floor – on 78 ‍days. That is more than every second day of the year. Fares are cheap, but demand is high. These trains are at crush capacity, and I can tell you they are simply not bloody safe.

I seek to incorporate this image into Hansard from the 7 am Wodonga V/Line service on Friday 1 ‍August. It is a snapshot of one part of the carriage showing all the pop-down side seats taken, people standing and other people sitting in the seats or in space reserved for wheelchairs. Let me put this into perspective. A person on this train travelling at 130 kilometres per hour – that is over 36 metres per second – is carrying a lot of momentum. Imagine the train crashes or derails or something similar and comes to a sudden stop. But the person does not. Their body keeps moving at full speed until something stops them – a wall, a seat, a window, probably another passenger. An average Australian adult weighs about 80 kilograms. Men are about 87 – well, we are a little bit above that – and our lovely women are all around about 72 kilos. If they hit something solid and come to a stop in just a 10th of a second, which is entirely possible in a crash, the force on the body could be over 24,000 ‍newtons. That is like being hit by a small truck. The likely consequences are head trauma, spinal injuries, broken bones and internal damage. At that speed, unrestrained, the chances of surviving are slim. The chances of walking away uninjured are close to zero.

The VLocity fleet on the north-east line are modified suburban sprinters. They are not designed for a 4-hour journey. They are entirely inappropriate for this line, and they are not safe. There are solutions. The government could always investigate proper long-haul passenger trains for the service on this line, except that our journey is nothing like a more arduous trip like the jolly jaunt to Bendigo. You could ditch the policy that allows everyone to catch a train irrespective of whether it is fully booked or not. We are not travelling from Broadmeadows to Flinders Street. Instead of coupling two three-car sets with no internal access, you could build six-car train sets.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: In regard to the member for Benambra’s request about incorporating into Hansard, my understanding is you need to talk to the Speaker about that beforehand. You can make it available to the house.