Tuesday, 31 March 2026

 Roma BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (19:10): (1613) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Public and Active Transport, and the action I seek is to urgently reinstate train seat bookings and stop this chaos by postponing track maintenance until after school holidays and after the May racing carnival. This train service is nothing short of a debacle. Labor cannot organise the simplest of systems. They cannot even guarantee a seat on the train. The Allan Labor government’s decision to make public transport free in April might have sounded good in a press release, but in reality it has created further confusion, disruption and distress right across my community. My office has been inundated with calls from frustrated locals – people who are being told they cannot reserve a seat. The website says one thing, staff say another, and even after hours on the phone there are still no answers. This is not the fault of the frontline staff; they have been left in the dark by a government that announces first and thinks later.

The consequences are real. Schoolchildren could be left on the side of the road unable to get to camp, because there is no way we can know whether the group booking will be honoured. The Narrawong District Primary School excursion now hangs in the balance. A local carer was forced to cancel a long-planned trip to the zoo for two clients with disabilities because she could not guarantee them a seat. These are vulnerable people who rely on certainty, and this government has taken that away. Ian Anderson from Portland travels to Melbourne every fortnight for cancer treatment at Peter MacCallum. He cannot stand for a 3-hour journey. He relies on a booked seat. Now he is left wondering if he will be able to access life-saving care. Honestly, this tired and arrogant Allan Labor government could not organise a chook raffle.

If that is not enough, this government has scheduled planned rail maintenance again right in the middle of peak school holidays over Easter and, we have been told, during the May racing carnival. There will be no trains for one of Warrnambool’s biggest weeks of the year, an event that brings more than $15 million to our region. Imagine shutting down trains during Melbourne Cup week. That is exactly what is being imposed on our region. This is a pattern: big announcements, no planning, no coordination and no regard for regional communities. Free public transport means nothing if you cannot get on a train. Labor has turned something simple into chaos. My constituents are not asking for much. They are asking for basic competence and the ability to book a seat, to plan a journey and to rely on the system.