Tuesday, 17 February 2026

 David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan) (17:32): (2300) My question is to the Minister for Public and Active Transport. It has certainly been a bumper summer for Melbourne’s gunzels – public transport enthusiasts – and I count myself as one of them. I finally got to ride on the Metro, the new Metro Tunnel, which opened last year to much fanfare and no doubt some tossing of hard hats into the air. Then we got the big switch in February, integrating the Sunbury, Cranbourne and Pakenham lines. I must say the new stations do look great and the new timetables have made some long-awaited improvements to some established train lines. People who use the Sunbury line will no doubt be delighted by the announcement of around 198 new weekday services, 136 extra services on a Saturday and 128 on a Sunday, equating to 1254 extra services weekly. However, they may also wonder why many of these services stop just shy of Sunbury and terminate instead at the much less frequented Watergardens station. Regardless, there has been a great improvement in train frequency, with a train arriving every 20 minutes from Sunbury and every 10 minutes from Watergardens.

However, there is still no joy for people living in the outer west. They continue to endure the most awful public transport, with scant integration between buses and train services. It seems that once again the west – Labor’s so-called heartland – is left underserviced and out in the cold. I have raised this so many times. The outer west is the fastest growing region in Australia, but the Victorian government has no integrated transport plan for the region. While it continues to pour money into the Suburban Rail Loop, the people of the west must contend with this government’s piecemeal approach to adding a couple of extra bus services here and there or announcing a new station, which is unlikely to be a reality any time in the next decade if at all. Where is the plan to improve public transport in the west? The north and west Melbourne bus plan went to cabinet in 2023 but was rejected. It needs to be either revisited or rethought, because the government cannot just write off vast areas of Melbourne as public transport deserts. The action I seek is for the minister to present a coordinated western and northern metro reform plan for integrating buses and trains to deliver better transport options for the people of the outer west and the northern suburbs.