Greens: Helping People Look For Work

[ozbob]

http://itsyourbrisbane.com/commitments/helping-people-look-for-work/

Helping People Look For Work

Posted January 27th, 2016

The Greens' Brisbane Lord Mayoral candidate, Ben Pennings, committed today to remove a significant barrier for people finding employment by providing public transport concessions to all Health Care Card holders in Brisbane.

"Every State and Territory apart from Queensland provides public transport concessions for unemployed people because they recognise that the cost of transport can make it harder to find employment. The Greens in council will champion this initiative to at least help unemployed Brisbane residents get ahead," Mr Pennings said.

It's been 10 years since research by the Queensland Council of Social Service found a quarter of young jobseekers in Brisbane spend over ten per cent of their income on transport costs to attend job interviews and meet their support payment eligibility obligations. Since then, Brisbane has become the nation's most expensive city for public transport.

"Our plan will particularly assist those who travel from outer suburbs to job interviews in the city centre. The Greens in council would fund transport concessions for 2 years before the next State election. By then we hope the old parties will see sense and catch up to the rest of the country," Mr Pennings said.

The Greens' Helping People Look For Work plan would fund Translink 5.1 million dollars over 2 years leading to the next State election, allowing Health Care Card holders concession fares on all train, bus and ferry journeys within the Brisbane City Council area.

[ozbob]

A good initiative in principle, however needs to be consistent throughout Queensland.

Fare review is proceeding.

[ozbob]

The fact that a proposal such as this can be made further highlights the shambolic nature of public transport management in Queensland.  BCC and the rest  ...   

[STB]

Oh for goodness sakes Greens, you can't cherry pick locations for this sort of ticketing.  It needs to come from the State in order for it to be consistent!  Sigh.

[#Metro]

I think it is a start. Hey, it's Queensland, nothing is perfect.

At least some more appealing policies from the Greens. Let's hope they don't do their 'Light Rail on all the busways' thing they came out with for the last three elections.

[James]

This is dumb policy obviously written up by someone who has no idea how the ticketing system works.

So you give them concession cards - but they're only allowed to use them on BT services? So if you transfer from a bus to a train, on the bus you are OK, but on the train you are committing an offence (fare evasion)? How do you manage the differing fares? What if they live outside of Brisbane but catch BT services? What if they live in Brisbane but mainly use non-BT services?

At least free travel is workable (simply don't touch on). This Brisbane-only concession rate is going to be nothing but a total and utter shambles, and the Greens can use it to win votes, but won't actually have to follow through with it because they'll never win government.