Media reporting suggests that Victorian Public Transport Minister Lynne Kosky’s departure was indeed for “family reasons”. Whatever the details (and they of course aren’t our business), good luck to her and her family as she confronts what sounds like a very serious challenge.
Kosky’s time in the public transport portfolio has not been a happy one, and her departure will undoubtedly be handy for the government. Victoria’s public transport system, particularly the train system, has failed to cope with a big increase in passenger numbers. Nor could it cope with extreme weather; on the increasingly common 40 degree days down here in Melbourne, massive disruptions in the train system have become routine due to limitations with train air conditioning systems, buckling rails, and sagging wires. To top it off, the myki smartcard ticketing system is three years late, way over budget, and its tentative and partial introduction still isn’t working properly.
But how much is Kosky herself to blame for all of this?
Continue reading ‘Blame the Minister?’
As a VFL/AFL footballer, he “boasted neither elegance nor athleticism, but Justin Madden was one of the most supremely effective ruckmen of recent times”. As a minister in the Bracks and Brumby Labor governments, he’s arguably made one of the more successful transitions from sport to politics, notwithstanding the factional hackery of his staff (see here for some of the skullduggery inflicted). Madden is an architect by training, and has made noises in the past about the profilgate environmental footprint of the McMansions springing up in Melbourne’s outer suburbs. But, as Planning Minister, he’s presided over the continual watering-down of Melbourne 2030, a planning strategy that was supposed to contain Melbourne’s sprawl and encourage higher-density housing. This watering down has been heavily criticized, not least by the editorial staff of The Age. So it’s not entirely surprising that he’s bobbed up with an op-ed defending the government’s planning policies. Unfortunately, it displays a talent for evading one’s opponents never displayed by Madden on the footy field:
I totally reject the sort of intellectual superiority of some “planning experts” that would dictate an inflexible planning solution. People deserve choice. If they want to live in tram-track suburbs, good planning gives them the choice to do that. If growing suburbs on the fringe of the city meet their needs, then there must be appropriate supply. Too often the debate is hijacked either by a cultural snobbery against growth suburbs on the city fringe, or a self-serving not-in-my-backyard-ism against development in established areas.
I’m all for an honest and continuing debate about how best to manage Melbourne and Victoria’s growth. But I won’t stand for cultural snobbery and NIMBY-ism being dressed up as public debate.
Continue reading ‘Planning straw men’
She did say that in her speech to Parliament:
At times in our history the government of Queensland has sold beer, sawn and milled timber, retailed fish and even had 90 state owned butcher shops.
In Brisbane, our electricity network wasn’t state owned until 1977. And we didn’t own power stations until then either.
We’ve always owned a railway, but never owned a communications company. While we’ve retailed fish and meat, we’ve never been greengrocers.
So Bligh is arguing that what states own over time changes, and changed circumstances require decisions about what assets a state should own and what trading enterprises a state should be involved in.
She was actually quite articulate and even eloquent in the several times I’ve heard her on local ABC radio. And the speech in parliament is not bad at all. It’s just that people don’t listen. As soon as the interview ended callers, probably about 3 to one, rang in expressing visceral displeasure in no uncertain terms.
Continue reading ‘Years ago the Queensland government owned 90 butcher shops – Anna Bligh’s defence’
Intoning the phrase ‘Global Financial Crisis’ at every opportunity, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has been preparing the ground for the privatisation of a wide range of state assets. It was confirmed today that QR’s freight train business would be among the government owned enterprises flogged off.
Bligh seems to be assuming that selling the freight business will be less unpopular than privatising passenger rail. Maybe, maybe not. The unions are certainly unhappy. But hiving off the profitable bits of QR is just nuts. Aside from the economies of scale that will be lost, the lack of a cross-subsidy for public transport will cause immense problems further down the track. That will be compounded by the government’s quick return to an aversion to public spending, which is a complete backflip from its winning electoral message.
Queensland Labor never previously went down the privatisation track favoured in other states. Peter Beattie was happy to retain some fat in QR over a period of years to cushion the impact of restructuring on jobs. There’s also previously been a perception that diseconomies would result from selling off profitable bits of public assets in such a geographically huge state with such a dispersed population. Cross-subsidy is the only model that works for public services in this state.
Continue reading ‘Anna Bligh’s privatisation train will run off the rails’
You know we need one. Awful Carols etc. And I think the Brisbane City Council may have just gone a tad over the top with the bus decorations. I assume it’s the all Liberal (or is that LNP?) Campbell Newman council majority. Not wanting to be accused of grinchiness (given how awful they’ve been since Campbell got hold of a floor majority) and/or to fend off teh evil political correctness. But I think my fellow public transported citizens also felt this was more than a bit overdoing it…
Continue reading ‘Open Christmas season atrocities thread’
No one would every accuse the LNP leader Lawrence “the Borg” Springborg of being poll driven, would they? I mean… surely it’s a coincidence that the latest Galaxy Poll on state voting intentions found Labor leading strongest on transport and the LNP releasing a transport policy for Brisbane commuters the same day?
The said policy is an amalgam of the undercosted, weird (extra carriages on trains which won’t fit on the station) and possibly unfeasible, according to the government. But in the grand tradition of governments, Labor are claiming they were already thinking of the most apparently popular bit of the Borg’s train agenda, and may well steal it, but they wouldn’t be doing that because they were already… etc. The neatness of this trick is that the government can actually do something about what the opposition can only talk about, and at the same time it provides some dangerous incentives for the LNP to remain a policy free zone.
But, leaving aside the politics for a moment, The Borg’s initative is to have free fares for early and late commuters heading to and from the CBD by rail – from 6am to 7am and from 6pm to 7pm. The idea – supposed to reduce overcrowding on peak hour trains – is said to have been borrowed from a Melbourne iniative, which is what Labor are now saying they’ve been looking at for some time. Any Melbs folks care to tell us Quincelanders how it’s worked out in practice?
Getting back to the politics, Springborg combined his announcement with the launch of his own new form of transport – a campaign bus called “The Borg Express”. The visuals suggest part of his problem – the very self-centred (or if you prefer, leadership focused) nature of his campaign. I haven’t seen any qualitative polling on this, but I’d strongly suspect the LNP doesn’t have much of a brand, and the worst of both the Libs and the Nats might be haunting its image. The Borg has a lot riding on his own self-presentation, and the LNP must be hoping all the eggs in this particular basket don’t break as The Borg Express wends its way around.
I’m no climatologist, but it’s been a very long time since I’ve seen storms with as much force as we’ve now experienced in Brisbane and South East Queensland three times in four days, most recently about an hour ago, and with another one also accompanied by severe hail and dangerous winds apparently on the way yet again later on tonight.
Here are some images licenced under Creative Commons from flickr. Two aren’t actually of the most recent storms, but for those who aren’t used to a classic Brisbane storm, they might provide a bit of a lightning flash of illumination. Over at Circulating Library, there are also some contemporary photos to look at. Taking photos might be a tad risky, actually, as one of the two deaths from the storms has been a young man who unwisely tried to photograph a stormwater drain at Chermside on Sunday night. Via Stilgherrian, you can also have a squizzy at archived radar images of last night’s storms here. When I checked at around 5pm it was impossible to get on to the BOM site to check tonight’s storms on their way, and the site also couldn’t cope with the traffic just after the ABC weather at the end of the news.
courtesy of Garry’
courtesy of supernicko
courtesy of Michael Henderson
Continue reading ‘Stormy weather!’
Picture: The 112 West Preston-St Kilda tram
Melburnians regularly talk about the old days of tram travel.
These were the days before a tram trip could result in having to give your name and address to a “customer relations officer” because you’re either a fare cheat or forgetful*.
Continue reading ‘A streetcar named “arrrghhh”’
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