Tuesday, 25 August 2026

 Richard RIORDAN (Polwarth) (19:00): (1789) My adjournment this evening is for the Minister for Public Transport, and the action I seek is for the minister to publicly release the V/Line plans for the extra services on the Warrnambool train line. We have had quite the storytelling episode from the minister now for quite some time. I and my colleague the member for South-West Coast have been lobbying for a long time to make sure that six V/Line carriages that arrive in Geelong continue on down to Warrnambool so that the people of western Victoria, the people in South-West Coast and the people in Polwarth can actually get a seat on a train when it comes through five times a day. The government have made much of the fact that they have increased services. Yes, they have increased services, but magically, increased services mean 10,000 less seats a week. Can you believe that? A government so incompetent that they have increased services but delivered 10,000 less seats. That means school groups cannot get on the train. That means people in wheelchairs and on disability and mobility scooters cannot fit on the train. It means people who want to come to the great bike-riding rail trails of Polwarth, on the Timboon rail trail and out to Forrest and up to Beech Forest, cannot bring their bikes on the train, because there is simply not enough room.

We have been lobbying hard, and the whole time the minister for transport and V/Line have been telling the people of Polwarth, ‘No, you can’t have your extra three carriages, because your platforms aren’t long enough. It simply can’t work. Unlike every other train line in the state, we can’t lock the carriages to make sure people don’t go off the end and fall off the platform, or we can’t somehow manage the people on the train.’ Suddenly, lo and behold, with an election looming the Labor Party have now said that magically sometime between now and the election they are going to find some extra carriages, but we do not know when they are going to find the carriages. We do not know for how long they are committing to the carriages. What we do know is that for over 12 months this government has sworn black and blue to the people of Polwarth, ‘You can’t have your train. You can’t have your seats. You can’t have the service that you have had for the last hundred years. We’ve taken that all off you, and we can’t fix it.’ Magically, under the pressure from me and under the pressure from South-West Coast, we have now got the government saying, ‘We can provide the extra carriages.’ Minister, if you are going to provide the extra carriages, if you have now made that commitment, if you have now thrown into the rubbish bin your excuses for the last 12 months that it simply cannot be done – we have said all along it can be done – when is it going to happen, how many extra carriages are we getting, what days of the week will they be and when can the people of Polwarth expect it?