Queensland Parliament Hansard
Matters of public interest
https://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/documents/hansard/2017/2017_02_28_DAILY.pdfQueensland Rail
Mr POWELL (Glass House—LNP) (12.34 pm): Mr Deputy Speaker, it is official: the trains have
not been this bad since the Premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, was the transport minister and in control
at Queensland Rail.
Opposition members: Toot! Toot!
Mr POWELL: I take that interjection from the members of the LNP. Commuters already
suspected it and even the member for Nudgee knew it, as we learned this morning. Now we finally have
the data to back it up. As much as this government professes to be open and transparent—albeit that
we saw a rather cagey effort by the Minister for Energy this morning—it was the LNP who had to pry
the truth out of the Premier’s hands when it came to TransLink customer satisfaction. When did the
people of South-East Queensland get this data? They got it late on a Friday afternoon. Talk about open
and transparent: talk about a cover-up!
The November TransLink monthly performance snapshot shows that every customer satisfaction
measure for trains has decreased and that, as a result, the performance of public transport across
South-East Queensland is being dragged down by this incompetent Labor government’s management
of our Citytrain network. It is unsurprising, but now we have data to show just how much commuters
have given up on this inexperienced Palaszczuk government. Let me run you through some of the stats.
I would like to say that I will run you through the good ones to start with, but there are none. Overall
satisfaction with train usage in South-East Queensland is now at 66 points, which is four points lower
than at the 2015 election. That is not a shock. Since this mob took office the Redcliffe line has been
delayed, thousands of services have been cancelled and there has been a damning commission of
inquiry. Who can blame commuters for not being happy?
The next rating is the clincher—and I bet the Deputy Premier likes this one—because the train
reliability rating is the lowest since Premier Palaszczuk was transport minister back in 2011. During the
member for Inala’s tenure as the minister the reliability rating of our Citytrain network was atrocious.
The rating in quarter 3 of 2010-11 was 62; in quarter 4 of 2010-11 it was 61; and in quarter 1 of 2011-12
it was 61. If you fast-forward to November 2016 when the then Minister for Transport is now the Premier
of this state we have a reliability rating of 63 points. Six years of the Premier’s fingerprints are all over
Queensland Rail failures. We will go through some of the other train KPI failures of this government
from October to November 2016.
The graphs are quite telling when we look at them, because overall satisfaction is down four
points and safety and security are down five points. As it tracks along there—it is the lighter coloured
one—you see that it basically falls off a cliff in October 2016. Reliability is even worse. It was faring
better than all modes and then buses but, as you can see, there is a cataclysmic drop off the cliff in
October 2016 combining with Labor’s rail fail, down seven points. Comfort is down five points, and
again the same cliff is very evident in the graphs. Ease of use is down five points; proximity, down four
points; efficiency, down five points; and information—this is hardly surprising at all—down nine points.
Clearly, commuters are fed up with the lack of information about what is going on on their rail
network. The rating for accessibility is down five points, the rating for staff is down five points and the
rating for affordability is down five points. As I said, there is simply no good news for the government in
this monthly snapshot.
This is not the report card of a government that knows what it is doing. This is the mark of an
inexperienced Labor government, out of its depth and beholden to the unions. The LNP’s record is
clear, and commuters know it: if you want trains to run on time every time, you need an LNP
government.
