Wednesday, 15 October 2025

 Gabrielle WILLIAMS (Dandenong – Minister for Transport Infrastructure, Minister for Public and Active Transport) (14:40): Last week and well into this week we have been celebrating the impending opening of the Metro Tunnel in early December, a full year ahead of schedule. Now today it is time to talk about the big switch on 1 February, when we will be making the biggest change to public transport timetables since the city loop opened over 40 years ago. We will be adding more than 1000 services to the Metro Tunnel corridor and returning the Frankston line back into the city loop, and the Craigieburn and Upfield services will be made a bit more reliable because they will not have to compete with the Sunbury line for space any longer – all this plus new timetables across the metro and regional train and bus networks. And this is just the beginning because this is a futureproofing project that will allow us to keep meeting the needs of Victorians for a long time to come.

A lesser told story is about the job creation and the skills development made possible by this project. About 7000 construction workers were directly employed on the Metro Tunnel project, and then there is of course the indirect workforce, including our fantastic manufacturing and supply chain here in Victoria, supplying components to build those tunnels and the stations, and of course the manufacturers that built our locally made high-capacity metro trains. During trial ops and of course after the opening of the tunnel, there will be hundreds of Metro Trains Melbourne drivers and station staff, some newly recruited and many more upskilled, to keep our state moving for generations to come.

This project is not just about more trains, more often; it is a visionary project that has contributed to our economy and our skills pipeline. So when those opposite called this project a hoax, they not only refused to meet the needs of our growing community, they refused to invest in skills, they refused to invest in industry and they refused to invest in Victoria.