News

Labor needs to come clean – how many trains?

Friday 7 June 2019

The Andrews Labor Government needs to stop giving mixed messages to north-east communities. They need to let them know when they are getting new trains and more importantly, how many.

Member for Ovens Valley Tim McCurdy said that Transport Infrastructure Minister Jacinta Allan and Regional Development Minister Jaclyn Symes have promised new trains for the north-east line, but were avoiding making a commitment on numbers.

“The recent budget papers made it clear that the new trains were bound for the Labor-favoured rural cities of Ballarat and Geelong lines – the North-East was not mentioned,” he said.

“But Jaclyn Symes announced separately that the $340 million allocated to new VLocity trains also included modern rolling stock for the North-East line.”

Mr McCurdy said that the Andrews Labor Government had got the hopes up of the community too many times in regard to rail transport improvements and then let them down time and time again.

“We’ve been listening to Labor talk about new trains for the last three years,” he said

“Labor keeps telling us that they are getting on with the job but it’s been two weeks and we still don’t have any details.”