Thursday, 11 September 2025

South-Eastern Metropolitan bus services

[NAME AWAITING VERIFICATION]

Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (09:42): Last week I had the great joy of joining my colleague the wonderful member for Pakenham Emma Vulin out on the buses in Pakenham on the new route 928, which has now been extended all the way through to Berwick through Beaconsfield, connecting the communities on the south side of Officer and Beaconsfield and those new estates there on this great newly extended east–west bus route. Operated by Ventura Bus, it was great to have managing director Andrew Cornwall join us, as well as Aaron Binion, the Pakenham depot manager. Special thanks to Sobia, our driver, and we got to meet and chat with some passengers along the way as well.

Ventura is a terrific third-generation Australian family business. They are Melbourne’s largest operator, and they are based in Dandenong in the south-east with a state-of-the-art operations centre. It was great to chat with Andrew about some of the measures that they use to ensure safety and compliance, including relays from their control centre through to buses so that any challenging incidents can be dealt with without involving the driver and putting them in harm’s way. It is a terrific new route on a terrific new bus and a terrific new service. I thank Ventura for inviting Emma and me along to join for the hour.