Tuesday, 3 February 2026

 Nick McGOWAN (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (21:23): (2262) My question – I suppose it is more of a plea than a question, in all fairness – is to Minister Gabrielle Williams, the Minister for Public and Active Transport. Today, while we have been very busy in this place giving a number of condolences – most worthy of course, but nonetheless – in my electorate of Ringwood the Norwood Secondary College has yet again encountered a very significant problem when it comes to the buses that service the school. I raised this issue over a year and a half – in fact two years – ago with the previous minister. I raised it in the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee (PAEC) last year in June – on 5 June, to be precise, of last year – and the response at that time was that:

The operator of school bus route 2641 manages the type of vehicle used to service the route and has advised that while the bus often gets close to capacity, it has not reached or exceeded capacity.

That is a quote from the response to the PAEC question – that is, in the public hearings – by the minister at the time. The problem at Norwood Secondary College is, and I am advised this by the parents and the broader school community, the bus is routinely overcrowded – that is, there are more children than there are seats. The children – and they are young adults – then have to stand in the hallways. In some of the more modern buses of course there are no standing areas. Today the driver of that bus refused to move and five young people had to get off. This has perhaps come around in part because we know it is now free for students to travel on public transport. That is something I welcome. I have championed that for many years myself from opposition, and in government in fact, so I do not take exception to that. But what I do take exception to is five students who needed to get home having to literally step off that bus because they could not be accommodated.

There have been repeated requests from the school community and me as a local member to have a larger bus, and this is the crux of the issue. It is a smaller bus. It is not one of those concertina buses, as I call them – that is, the longer buses. They are precisely what we need. We know categorically that these buses are overcrowded consistently. We have had other issues with the safety of some of the drivers. I have the utmost respect for most of our bus drivers, but we have had issues on this particular route before with the safety and the wellbeing of these young people, these children. As I say, it is less a question and more a plea for Minister Williams to please intervene and ensure that the students on the 2641 bus route have a bus that is of sufficient size that everyone gets home every night, as I am sure we would wish them to do.