Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Obviously, I think both sides of politics are massive supporters of TAFE, but only one is going to get you there by train. For a long time, governments benchmarked themselves on whether the trains ran on time, but, for the first time in the history of humanity, we now have a situation where we benchmark governments on whether they can run a train at all. That is right.

What we have seen in this Queensland meltdown, which a number of those on the other side will not be intimately acquainted with because they are used to state governments being able to run train services, is a complete breakdown in commuter confidence. Economists have been studying for decades now indices of consumer confidence, but never have we had an index of commuter confidence. If there were one, Queensland would be close to zero.

In fact, it has not been this bad since Annastacia Palaszczuk was Minister for Transport. That was back in 2012, wasn't it? Reliability of the train services had plummeted at that time. We never thought this could all happen again. It seemed impossible that someone so incredibly incompetent could find themselves stumbling into the highest office in the state, but indeed, that has happened. In doing so, we all expected the trains to keep running the way the Newman government got them running, with trains on time 96 per cent of the time and a completely bloated Queensland department of transport trimmed back to a more efficient size. But, no, of course not. This is a union-beholden state government. This is a union-worshipping state government.

There is no better example of that than the fact that the union-dominated train drivers were not allowed to recruit anyone new at all. They said: 'No, you can't have freight train drivers. You can't have interstate train drivers.' In fact, they were training drivers, and they actually terminated the course a week before the drivers graduated and made them guards. Now we have a new rule at the Queensland department of transport: at Queensland Rail, we are only going to employ Queensland Rail staff. Why would they do that? The answer is simple: to keep overtime payments in the pockets of union members. They have a base pay rate of 120 grand. If they can puff up the overtime, they can hit 160 or 180 grand. That is what the unions want. They did not train an additional train driver. Then, of course, the system went 'pop', and there was not a train driver to run a service. Now we are short 472 services. They have been basically liquid-papered out of the Queensland Rail timetable.

We have an insoluble problem now: they cannot train anyone for one, two or more years. They have started taking outsiders, but only those with previous rail experience. This union-dominated organisation is using the minister as a puppet; he has fallen on his sword. It is now impossible to fix this problem within a year or two. It is a great concern to Queenslanders. Never before have 'rail' and 'fail' been in the same sentence, but, thanks to Annastacia Palaszczuk, the two will now be forever united as 'rail fail'.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for that contribution. In accordance with standing order 193, the time for members' constituency statements has now concluded.