Soybean Stew

Get the Met over the Town!!!!!

In the last few days, Kim Beazley reshuffled his front bench, a move that has been long overdue. The key moves are the demotion of Immigration Spokesperson Laurie Ferguson who handled the disunity within the enemy and the Peter Qasim case with suboptimal performance, and the return of my local member Lindsay Tanner. Overall, I was reasonably satisfied with the new shadow cabinet. As the dark forces get control of the Senate on July 1, Labor needs real policy differentiation and vigilance in holding the regime to account.

Today I attended a Public Transport forum organized by the North Fitzroy Branch of the ALP, held at Fitzroy High School, the spot where I once learned the program "Logo" and drew polygons when I was in third grade. Keynote speakers included Professor Brian Russell chair of the Transport Forum and union secretary Trevor Dobbyn. I was surprised and disappointed to find that Victoria had the second-worst performance in terms of innovation and investment in public transport over the last 20 years of all the states. Whilst Perth, Sydney and Brisbane have all seen the construction of new rail lines, Melbourne's rail network has seen no improvement since the opening of the City Loop in '82 and the Altona-Laverton link in '85.

I believe that the south-east, and especially the outer regions of new suburbs, needs to be the focus for improving public transport. In many new development areas where a lot of lower-middle income families live (the so-called "Howard Battlers"), public transport is next to non-existent. Often only three or four bus services are available all day that go to the nearest train station. Average transit times to Melbourne are longer than from Ballarat or Bendigo. Moreover, bus-train times are often seemingly deliberately designed to non-connect, causing long layovers at the train station. The Frankston and Dandenong lines are chronically mismanaged with an unacceptably high rate of cancellations and delays. I catch the Frankston Line to and from work, and have had to wait up to 90 minutes on occasions following three consective cancelled trains and when one finally came it resembled a Shanghai bus.

In these areas, public transport frequency needs to be greatly improved and co-ordinated to existing trains into the city. More express limited-stop services from Dandenong and Frankston are also a good idea, perhaps only stopping at Clayton/Huntingdale and Caulfield.

It is a crying shame that if these areas had a viable PT system, commuters would save huge amounts of money for not needing to buy two cars and in terms of fuel costs in comparison to rail fares. The amounts saved would amount to infinitely more than the measly $6pw tax cuts offered by the Howard Government which will be more than obliterated by petrol price increases due to oil.

And these areas just happen to be in the marginal seats the ALP need to win, both in state and federal elections! It would be a political goldmine wasted.

I hope all my comrades are having an enjoyable time at Ed Conference in Perth.

On Wednesday, I head to Auckland for two days from where I will make my way to Wellington to see some New Zealand YL figures before starting next week in the Wairarapa.

posted by Max Soy @ 5:00 AM