Wednesday, 12 August 2026

 Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (17:38): I rise tonight to speak on the Victorian Auditor-General Office’s (VAGO) recent audit Improving Bus Services. Victoria’s bus plan was an ambitious document. It was a little light on detail, as is often the case, but it presented a bold vision for Melbourne’s bus network to become a proper mass transit option by 2031. About two-thirds of Melbourne is not within reach of train or tram service, which means that buses are a critical component of a comprehensive public transport network. If we want to enable people to get from anywhere to anywhere in Melbourne by public transport, buses will have to be part of the solution, so making them a proper mass transit option is crucial. But the bus plan’s ambition has not so far translated into action. Despite some promising consultations on significant reforms in Melbourne’s north and north-east that took place in late 2022, the only real action we have seen is tinkering around the edges – a new route in a growth suburb here, a few extra services on the weekends there. It is all very welcome, but it is not serious reform.

VAGO’s verdict is clear: routine planning and management will not deliver the mass transit ambitions that are set out in Victoria’s bus plan. The government cannot just keep tinkering around the edges and pretend that it is enough. We need proper bus reform to realise this vision. There is not some huge mystery here about what needs to happen; we know in broad terms what we need to do. As the bus plan said, albeit without much detail, we need to unscramble the bus network and provide a network that is simple, direct, fast and frequent and that gets people where they need to go. Recommendations 1, 2 and 3 in Infrastructure Victoria’s 2025 paper Fast, Frequent, Fair were to (1) increase frequencies, (2) optimise the network through fast and direct routes and (3) extend operating hours. Community campaigns are already doing the work, mapping out what this can look like in some areas. Friends of the Earth’s Better Buses campaign has come up with a detailed map of what a reformed network in the western suburbs could look like: a grid structure of fast and direct routes focused on the arterial road network.

One of the first priorities identified in the bus plan, action 1 of the 2021–23 period, was to develop the bus reform implementation plan which would then set the path for those serious reforms. We in the Greens saw this and we really looked forward to seeing that bus reform implementation plan published. When we had not seen any sign of it by February 2025, we asked the department about it in the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee. They took that question on notice, but when their answer finally came back it did not actually provide any information about the bus reform implementation plan. Instead the secretary waffled on, sadly, about the incremental changes to the bus network that have been made recently and then closed with a generic statement about providing robust advice to the government and claiming executive privilege on that advice – so nothing about the bus reform implementation plan specifically. The Greens have been left with the impression that this document was simply never created, just like the integrated transport plan that is required by our Transport Integration Act 2010 that has never been created, and that it was yet another casualty of this government’s poor record on transparency and on planning. But what VAGO’s audit has revealed is that the implementation plan does exist, it has just never been published, and this lack of transparency is something that VAGO has rightly criticised. The Greens and the Victorian public still have not seen this document, but what we can glean from VAGO’s audit is that the department’s thinking is along the same lines as Infrastructure Victoria and along the same lines as the community Better Buses campaign: a modern grid of frequent routes within 800 metres of most households.

We all know what needs to be done to make buses a real mass transit option for the people of Melbourne, but so far Labor has just lacked the political will and prioritisation to do it. Our newly minted Premier Ben Carroll was the minister responsible for producing Victoria’s bus plan. I actually raised it with Mr Carroll in one of the first meetings that I had when I took on the public transport portfolio for the Greens in person, and he seemed well across the issues. At the time I think he was stymied by a Premier and a Treasurer who would not let him implement this vision for bus reform in Melbourne, but now he is in the top job and the buck stops with him. So it will be a test of his leadership, whether we see a bus network delivered that meets Melbourne’s needs or if we continue with one that neglects two-thirds of Melburnians that are stuck with a subpar system.